University of Baltimore School of Law student Andrea Bento (left) and assistant state’s attorney George Simms (right) listen to a student during Truancy
Court at A. Mario Loiederman Middle School in Silver Spring.

students

seats

GETTING
BACK IN

LINDSAY A. POWERS AND
ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH

BY

M

STAFF WRITERS

ontgomery
County students who repeatedly miss
class are getting
guidance from unlikely allies: local prosecutors and judges.
In a program that spread
to the county from Baltimore
in 2010, Montgomery County
prosecutors and a local judge
meet with students facing a
range of attendance issues, from
persistent lateness to chronic
absence.
According to a report by
Montgomery County’s Ofﬁce of
Legislative Oversight, “habitual
truancy” is deﬁned as missing
18 days in a semester or 36 days
of school in a school year.
About 984 county public
school students were habitually
truant in 2009, including about
627 in high school, the report

HABITUAL TRUANCY

Montgomery County Public Schools’ habitual truancy rate has increased slightly in recent years as Maryland’s rate has
decreased. “Habitual truancy” is deﬁned as missing 18 days in a semester or 36 days of school in a school year,
according to a report by Montgomery County’s Ofﬁce of Legislative Oversight.

2.5
2.0

STATE

2.32%

1.93%

2.25%

1.89%

1.80%

1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0

2008-09

Constructing the underground section of the
Capital Crescent Trail in downtown Bethesda in
compliance with the Americans with Disabilities
Act would cost the county about $40 million, county
planners said at a Thursday planning board meeting.
A less costly option would be to allow the tunnel
to have a steeper grade than is permitted under the
ADA, but install an elevator to meet requirements.
That option would cost about $15 million, said David Anspacher, senior planner, at the Bethesda Purple Line Minor Master Plan Amendment session.
The second option also would require closing
a private parking lot on Elm Street, which would
have to be done through negotiations between the
county and the property owner.
Anspacher said the trail is “intended to be one of
the best trails in the country.”
The planning staff recommended the Planning
Board put the second, less expensive option into
the Bethesda Purple Line Station Minor Master
Plan amendment, but in the end the board decided
to recommend that the plan include an option for
the trail to go through the tunnel, beneath the Apex
building at 7272 Wisconsin Ave., that is ADA compliant.
Planners want to tear down the Apex building,
which also houses the Bethesda Regal 10 movie theater, to build the “optimal” Bethesda station. Doing
so would allow access to both the Purple Line and
Metro’s Red Line, according to county documents.
The Purple Line is a planned 16-mile $2.2 billion
light rail that will link Bethesda and New Carrollton.
Planning Board Member Norman Dreyfuss

See TRAIL, Page A-9

MONTGOMERY

0.72%

County must keep its promise
on Purple Line, member says

0.63%

0.40%
2009-10

2010-11

1.13%

1.08%

2011-12

2012-13

Getting to give

SOURCE: MONTGOMERY COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS, MARYLAND STATE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

says. The same year, more than
8,600 students were chronically
absent, missing 20 or more days
of school.

Montgomery County ranks
in the middle of the pack among
Maryland counties’ habitual
truancy rates.

The Garrett Park Estates/White Flint Park
Citizens’ Association unanimously rejected
the county school board’s proposal to build
a school in their neighborhood park, which
would render it unavailable to locals during

NEWS

ACCESS
FOR ALL
County program aims
to drastically increase
amount of public
information available.

A-4

school hours.
About 35 people showed up to express
their distaste for the idea, which is called “colocating,” at a Nov. 20 meeting at Garrett Park
Elementary School. There are 45 co-located
schools and parks in the county.
“You’re not looking to co-locate the park,
you’re looking to take the park,” said Terry McCoy to Bruce Crispell, director of the school
system’s Division of Long-range Planning, and
Nkosi Yearwood of the planning department,
echoing a frustration many in the audience ex-

pressed.
The school had been slated to be built as
part of the White Flint Mall redevelopment and
is included in the White Flint Sector Plan. It was
to be built on the south side of the White Flint
Mall property, currently a parking lot. But last
year, the developer of the mall, Lerner Enterprises, reduced the size of the school site to 3.6
acres.
The site was shrunken to accommodate a

SPORTS

A PATH
WITH MANY
DETOURS

Magruder High School grad
recovers from serious blood
clot, pursues dream of
playing professional soccer.

From left, kindergartners Camryn Fiorentino, Piper
Lyons and Henry Wheaton-Schopp at Bethesda
Country Day School pick out food items to be
donated to needy families for Thanksgiving. The
food went to the Bethesda Chevy-Chase YMCA.

B-13
B-5
A-2
B-9
A-11
A-8
A-6
B-1

Check out our Services Directory
ADVERTISING INSIDE B SECTION

1906197

THE GAZETTE

Page A-2

Wednesday, November 27, 2013 b

PEOPLE& PLACES
More online at www.gazette.net

AGNES BLUM

Cancer group honors
Potomac woman
Deanna Siegfried of Potomac
was awarded the 2013 Spirit of
Hope Award from the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation during
the opening ceremony of the nonproﬁt’s Race for Research: Washington, D.C. 5K Walk/Run on Nov. 16
at National Harbor in Oxon Hill.
Siegfried was honored for her
dedication to fundraising and her
work to raise awareness of multiple
myeloma. The foundation is a charity she embraced after her mother
was diagnosed with the incurable
blood cancer.
“Nothing is harder than having
someone you love diagnosed with a
disease, especially one that is incurable,” she said in a statement. “There
is a roller coaster of emotions, test
results that give you hope and those
that don’t when a treatment stops
working or the disease becomes
resilient. My family is all too familiar
and this is a roller coaster that no
one should have to ride.”
Siegfried led a large walk team,
the Myeloma Mashers, in the event.
Nearly 1,400 people walked,
raising almost $300,000 for multiple
myeloma research.
The foundation “is an organization that is unprecedented in
its ability and proven success in
bringing together a vast network of
physicians, patients, and researchers to achieve some common goals
— to pursue innovative means
that accelerate the development of
next-generation multiple myeloma
treatments, to extend the lives of
patients, and to ultimately ﬁnd a
cure,” Dr. Dipti Patel-Donnelly of Virginia Cancer Specialists, honorary
chairwoman of the event, said in a
news release. “With the help of supporters and world class partners,
the [foundation] has built one of the
strongest and most impressive cancer communities in the country.”
For more information, visit

GALLERY

Northwest’s E.J. Lee battles for tough yards against
the Quince Orchard defense Friday in the 4A region
final. For more, go to clicked.gazette.net.
SPORTS Check online this weekend for
coverage of the state semifinal football games.
A&E Creation of Hanukkah
Forever stamp explored.

For more on your community, visit www.gazette.net

KELVIN CHEN

www.themmrf.org.

Bethesda video
producer wins award
Sue Stolov of Washington Independent Productions in Bethesda
took home a Peer award on behalf
of the Army Warrior Transition
Command on Nov. 16 at the National Press Club.
Stolov was honored for the
promotional video, “Hire a Veteran:
Obstacles & Solutions.”
Winning the award is like winning a local Oscar, said Stolov, a
non-broadcast video producer.
The 2013 awards ceremony,
hosted by the Television, Internet
& Video Association DC recognizes
Washington-area non-broadcast
video and ﬁlm production talent.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce plans to send a video link to
500,000 small-business owners and
employers nationwide.
Stolov’s company was hired by
the Warrior Transition Command
to produce a video to ease some
of the concerns that can stop em-

ployers from hiring wounded veterans, particularly concerns about
post-traumatic stress disorder and
the cost of accommodations for
wounded veterans. Nationally,
unemployment is 6.8 percent, but
for post-9/11 veterans it is much
higher — about 10 percent.

Charity dog walk
in Woodacres
Dog lovers take note: The third
annual Woodacres Jingle Bells Dog
Walk is set for 4 p.m. Sunday at the
intersection of Ramsgate Road and
Welborn Drive in the Woodacres
neighborhood in Bethesda.
The charity walk will be led by
bagpiper Norm Weaver and three
ﬁretrucks from the Glen Echo
Volunteer Fire Department. Come
cheer the 40 to 50 dogs that are expected to wend their way through
the neighborhood, ending at Woodacres Park. There will be three refreshments stops along the way.
Donations will be equally
divided among three designated
charities: the Glen Echo Volunteer

Fire Department; Best Buddies, a
Walt Whitman High School club;
and Hero Dogs of Brookeville, a
nonproﬁt that trains service dogs
for wounded veterans from Iraq
and Afghanistan. A hero dog will be
attending.

Send items at least two weeks in advance of the paper in which you would like them
to appear. Go to calendar.gazette.net and click on the submit button.
Questions? Call 301-670-2070.

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 27

ConsumerWatch

Deanna Siegfried of Potomac (back row, fourth from the right), here with the Myeloma Mashers, was honored by the Multiple
Myeloma Research Foundation before the nonproﬁt’s fundraising race Nov. 16 in Oxon Hill.

DEATHS
Elizabeth B. Argent
Elizabeth B. Argent, 89, formerly of Bethesda,
died Nov. 20, 2013. Interment will take place in the
spring. Covenant Funeral Service in Fredericksburg,
Va., handled the arrangements.

Russell T. Kinsey
Russell T. Kinsey, 66, of Silver Spring, died Nov.
15, 2013. A service took place Nov. 23 at Parklawn
Memorial Park in Rockville.

THE GAZETTE

Wednesday, November 27, 2013 b

Page A-3

LOCAL

Candidates press the ﬂesh at Bethesda gathering
District 16 delegate
race already has eight
candidates for three seats
n

BY AGNES BLUM
STAFF WRITER

The incumbent, the retired
school teacher and the lone
Republican were just three of
the eight candidates — and one
spokeswoman — who campaigned for votes at the annual
fall meeting of the Bradley Boulevard Citizens Association on
Nov. 20.
Before they spoke, the crowd
heard from County Councilman Phil Andrews (D-Dist. 3) of
Gaithersburg, who is running for
county executive against Isiah
Leggett, the current county executive, and Douglas M. Duncan,
who held the job before. Andrews
spoke of his battles to keep the
county from overspending, such
as voting against a recent council
pay raise of 28 percent, for the incoming council. His was the lone
dissenting vote.
A successful example of his
saving taxpayer money was the
10 percent reduction of Leggett’s
energy tax that Andrews helped
pass.
Max Zweig of the Bradley

Boulevard Citizens Association
then introduced each of the District 16 candidates, all of whom
are running for one of three delegate seats. District 16 encompasses Bethesda, Cabin John,
Glen Echo and parts of Chevy
Chase, Potomac and Rockville.
Each had three minutes
to introduce themselves and
briefly describe why they deserved to win.
Marc Korman, a Bethesda
lawyer, emphasized his experience with the Bethesda Urban
Partnership and the Western
Montgomery County Citizens
Advisory Board, for which he
serves as chairman, and said
that one of his top issues would
be transportation.
“Metro’s not working very
well,” Korman said. “It’s getting
a reputation as high cost and
unreliable.”
Rachel Gumpert, who represented Hrant Jamgochian of
Bethesda, who was away on
business, said her candidate was
“very passionate about health
care and early education for
kids.” She also said Jamgochian,
an attorney and health care advocate, was a strong supporter
of bus rapid transit, a controversial proposal the county has
examined that would dedicate

BILL RYAN/THE GAZETTE

Democrat Karen Kuker-Kihl (left), who’s running for the House of Delegates
in District 16, which includes much of Bethesda and Potomac, chats with
Deborah Toll of Bethesda.
certain lanes as bus only.
Kevin Walling of Bethesda,
who helped lobby in Annapolis to legalize gay marriage in

Maryland, said voters are “looking for the next generation of
progressive leadership.” He said
he would go to bat for students

and teachers if sent to Annapolis.
Meyer Marks, the only Republican, had earlier flirted
with running for governor. The
Bethesda resident said he would
help the state get its ﬁscal house
in order.
“Every year we’re running a
budget deﬁcit,” said Marks, who
is a health care policy consultant. “This tax and spending has
to stop.”
Gareth Murray, who served
in the House of Delegates in
2002, told the audience that
the schools needed more state
funding. The Potomac resident
went on to speak about a “shift
in the paradigm that we use
for education,” and advocated
K-12, higher education and the
business community working
together.
Karen Kuker-Kihl, a retired
teacher, said children would
always come first if she was
elected. After years of being a
civic activist, the Bethesda resident said, she knows a lot of the
players and how to get things
done.
“I’m good at working behind
the scenes,” she said.
The only incumbent, Delegate Ariana Kelly, who serves on
the House Health and Govern-

ment Operations Committee,
spoke about a need for more resources to help the mentally ill.
“We still have an inadequate
mental health system,” said the
Bethesda resident, who called
herself a “good Democrat.”
The last candidate of the
night to speak was Jordan Cooper, who said his top priority
would be to help drive down the
cost of health care.
“Every single month we have
individuals facing rising health
care costs,” said Cooper, who
told the audience his father was
a physician and mother a nurse.
“The cost of health care in this
country is unaffordable and unsustainable.”
In addition to Kelly, District
16 is now represented by Dels. C.
William Frick and Susan C. Lee,
and Sen. Brian E. Frosh. All three
are Democrats.
With Frosh and Frick ﬁghting it out for attorney general,
one delegate seat will open up.
And because Lee is going for
Frosh’s Senate seat, so will a
second. All three seats are up for
grabs.
The primary will be June 24,
2014, and the general election
Nov. 4, 2014.
ablum@gazette.net

Council rules out housing atop new Bethesda police station
Action points to difﬁculty
of creating affordable homes
n

BY SONNY GOLDREICH
SPECIAL TO THE GAZETTE

The Montgomery County Council
demonstrated the difﬁculty of developing affordable housing as it declared
that it isn’t feasible to build units atop
a new police station planned for downtown Bethesda.
Nobody had any plans for such a
mixed-use project, but the council on
Nov. 19 went through the motions of
examining the possibility for the ﬁrst
time since a new law took effect in May
requiring the county to explore adding
affordable housing to any new capital
building plan.
Technically, the council voted
unanimously that there is no further
public need for the county-owned 2nd
District Police Station at 7359 Wisconsin
Ave. The property will be turned over
to Bethesda-based StonebridgeCarras,
which is exploring redeveloping the site
for residential or commercial space. In

return, the developer will build a bigger
police station at 4823 Rugby Ave.
Although the station project was in
the works before the affordable housing
law passed, the council asked legislative
and executive staff to explore the possibility of including residential space at
Rugby Avenue as part of the new police
station project.
The property has some advantages
to building affordable housing, including that it sits about half a mile away
from the Bethesda Metro and many services and amenities surround it, senior
legislative analyst Linda McMillan said.
But space constraints make it a prohibitively expensive choice, she added.
Greg Ossont, deputy director of the
Department of General Services, agreed,
noting that there is little room to accommodate both the police station and
housing. He said 90-foot height limits
would allow for expanding the police
project from four stories to as many as
eight but that the needs of the police station would not provide sufﬁcient room
for a ﬁrst-ﬂoor entrance for housing.
“Once you introduce the residential
stairs, the residential mailbox room, the

residential elevators up to what would
be the additional ﬂoors above the police station, it starts to eat up a lot of the
ﬁrst ﬂoor,” he said.
The bottom line is that it would cost
more than $1 million to add an incomplete ﬂoor and then even more to construct the residential units, Ossont said.
That would put the added cost in excess
of $170 per square foot.
Councilman Roger Berliner (DDist. 1) of Bethesda, who introduced
the affordable housing study bill last
year, said the county must be willing to
spend money to build units.
“Our county is committed to providing more affordable housing, and we
know it doesn’t come cheap,” he said.
But Rick Nelson, director of the Department of Housing and Community
Affairs, noted that the county’s Housing Initiative Fund doesn’t have enough
money for a police station project. He
noted that an eight-story building
would be a semi-high-rise, which costs
far more to build than the garden apartment projects that the county prefers.
“In view of what it would cost to do
maybe 10-15 units that money could be

better spent elsewhere to get affordable
housing,” Nelson said.
He added that the county will be
making a recommendation to the council next month to proceed with plans to
build personal living quarters, or PLQs,
for the homeless as part of the redevelopment of Progress Place. That project
will relocate to Silver Spring’s Ripley
District Department of Health and Human Services’ services to low-income
and homeless populations that include
programs run by current contractors
Shepherd’s Table and Interfaith Works.
But even the modest Progress Place
project — which would provide 21
200-square-foot units — set off debate
about how best to spend county funds
on affordable housing.
“Good lord, there are condos you
can buy in Montgomery County for less
than the cost of the 200[-square]-foot
PLQs that was proposed,” Councilman
Marc Elrich (D-At Large) of Takoma
Park said.
The county estimates that the PLQs
would cost about $3.4 million, or $161,300
per unit. County Executive Isiah Leggett
(D) has pushed for including housing

units as part of the Progress Place project,
but he has scaled back the plan. He originally ﬂoated building 42 PLQs at a cost of
$3.7 million, which proved to be an unrealistically low-ball estimate.
The county needs to take a broader
look at cost-efﬁciency and start committing to larger projects that make
maximum use of taxpayer money, Elrich said.
Beyond how to spend county
money, the council also needs to take a
closer look at where it builds affordable
housing and impact on school achievement and other social cost, said council
President Nancy Navarro, (D-Dist. 4) of
Silver Spring.
“There are costs associated with
concentration of low-income housing,”
she said. From one perspective, housing costs more in Bethesda, but from
another, the county can’t keep placing
low-income housing in Silver Spring,
she said.
Ossont noted that the county is pursuing plans to build a mixed-use complex at White Flint that will include a
new ﬁre station and affordable housing
for senior citizens.

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John Van Eck stood in the
center of a circle of chairs, jotting
down notes on a whiteboard from
a revolving group of people who
stopped by his station.
The suggestions included trafﬁc
ﬂow, parking, bus stops, real-time
service alerts, updates on weather
and information on usage for the
Intercounty Connector.
Van Eck works for the county’s
Department of Transportation,
but the notes he was taking came
from a workshop Thursday night
to generate ideas and feedback for

the evolution of dataMontgomery, the county’s data portal that
seeks to provide county businesses
and residents with raw data they
can use to get information about
various aspects of the county.
People are always interested in
transportation, Van Eck said.
One suggestion was one the
county already started to work on —
real-time information on bus routes.
The point of Thursday’s meeting was to get a feel for the type of
data sets people want and what the
county should be prioritizing, said
Dan Hoffman, chief innovation ofﬁcer for the county.
The website currently lists
about 90 sets of data, from county
employee salaries to information
on food inspections and the types
of requests most commonly made
for the county’s MC311 information service, but Hoffman said the

county hopes to have about 400 sets
of data up by next summer.
Inthecomingweeks,they’resetto
post data sets on such diverse issues
as election results, ﬁre and rescue incident calls, sewer overﬂows and alcoholic beverage license violations.
Hoffman said employee salaries
is one of the most popular searches.
“It’s the curiosity data set,” he
said.
Having the information directly
available online has saved the county’s Public Information Ofﬁce time
answering requests because they
can just email a link, he said.
But while they strive to provide
all types of data, that’s not always
possible.
The county does not publish
the names of police ofﬁcers who
work undercover, Hoffman said.
Social services information can
also be sensitive because of federal

regulations, leaving the county to
ﬁgure out how to provide useful information without compromising
people’s privacy, he said.
Montgomery Village resident
Carrie Smedira said she thought
Thursday’s event was interesting
because it gave her a say in what
types of data she can access.
While the amount of raw data
on the site might make it difﬁcult
for some people to sort through,
Montgomery has a lot of very analytical people who will enjoy looking
through it, she said.
Pete Tan of Silver Spring said he
found out about Thursday’s event
on Twitter earlier that day, then
went to the website to check it out.
Tan said he sees the data as having equal value for businesses and
residents.
rmarshall@gazette.net

Out of
Africa
The African Youth
Choir of Uganda performs Saturday night
at Bethesda-Chevy
Chase High School.
The group performs
around the world,
raising awareness
and funds to support education and
youth development
programs across
Africa.
RAPHAEL TALISMAN/
FOR THE GAZETTE

Wednesday, November 27, 2013 b

InBrief
Civic group to hear report
on night time economy
Heather Dlhopolsky, chairwoman of the
Montgomery County Night Time Economy Task
Force, will discuss the group’s ﬁndings at the
Montgomery County Civic Federation meeting from 7:45 to 10 p.m. Monday at the County
Council Ofﬁce Building, 100 Maryland Ave.,
Rockville.
After her presentation, there will be a question-and-answer period and updates on other
key local issues.
All county residents and representatives of
civic organizations are welcome.
Free parking is available in the adjacent
county garage.
For more information, visit www.montgomerycivic.org.

Media center honors Chevy Chase man
The Rev. Barry W. Lynn of Chevy Chase, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, has won the annual
$100,000 Pufﬁn/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship from the Nation Institute, a nonproﬁt
media center, and the Pufﬁn Foundation, which
supports the arts.
The award will be presented to Lynn on Dec.
9 at the institute’s annual dinner in New York
City.
Lynn, a lawyer and ordained minister in the
United Church of Christ, is being honored for
his “unwavering dedication to religious liberty,”
leading Americans United to help uphold the
constitutional principle of church-state separation, according to the institute. Under his
leadership since 1992, Americans United has
engaged in court challenges and public education on issues that range from reproductive
rights and religion in schools to school vouchers
and judicial nominations. The Pufﬁn Foundation and Nation Institute co-sponsor the prize,
which is given to an individual who has challenged the status quo through distinctive, courageous, imaginative and socially responsible
work, according to a news release. Recipients
are drawn from a range of occupations and pursuits, including academia, journalism, public
health, literature, art, environmental sciences,
labor and the humanities.

POLICE BLOTTER

Complete report at www.gazette.net
The following is a summary of incidents in the Bethesda
area to which Montgomery County police responded recently. The words “arrested” and “charged” do not imply
guilt. This information was provided by the county.

Leggett: Pedestrians at more risk in parking lots
n

Growing number of crashes
spurs new saftey initiative
BY

SYLVIA CARIGNAN
STAFF WRITER

It may be the holiday season,
but that also means it’s the shopping season when more cars and
pedestrians share the county’s parking lots. On Thursday, Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett
launched a campaign to educate
pedestrians and help curb the number of accidents between pedestrians and cars in shopping areas.
At Dawson’s Market in Rockville, Leggett unveiled the educational campaign, including
brochures, reusable grocery bags
and pavement decals. The County

Council has dedicated $50,000 to a
pedestrian parking lot safety program this year, which is paying for
the educational materials.
This year’s campaign is building on Leggett’s original pedestrian
safety initiative, which started in
December 2007.
“The original initiative looked at
roadway collisions, and has focused
on that,” county spokeswoman Esther Bowring said. “We realized that
the increase from 2011 to 2013 in
pedestrian collisions was actually
an increase in those that occurred
in parking lots.”
According to a county press
release, 423 pedestrian collisions
between people and vehicles were
reported in Montgomery County
in 2012. About 30 percent of those,
or 125 incidents, were in parking

lots and garages. The county found
that about 18 percent of parking lot
crashes with pedestrians resulted in
severe or incapacitating injuries.
Bowring said the same percent
of collisions on roadways, about 20
percent, resulted in severe or incapacitating injuries.
“As we’re trying to ﬁgure out
and get a handle on what is going
on, and why these things are happening, we felt it was important —
especially with the holiday season
coming up — that people are educated,” she said.
Bowring said a county task
force is working to ﬁnd patterns in
pedestrian crash data. A group with
representatives from county departments and agencies are sharing information and considering ways to
educate the public about the issue.

The county is forming partnerships with developers to reach retailers throughout the county. They
have formed relationships with
Foulger-Pratt, JBG Rosenfeld Retail,
Lakeforest mall owner Urban Retail
Properties, Peterson Cos. and others.
Dawson’s Market, which is part
of Rockville Town Square and has
garage parking, has educational
materials from the county on display inside the store. Bus shelters
and Ride On buses also have county
brochures about pedestrian safety,
including materials in Spanish. The
campaign’s outdoor elements, like
pavement decals, will be installed
in county garages over the next few
months, Bowring said.
scarignan@gazette.net

THANKSGIVING WEEKEND CLOSINGS
Most Montgomery County and other government ofﬁces and programs will be closed Thursday in observance of Thanksgiving Day. Here’s a
schedule:
• County ofﬁces: Closed.
• Libraries: Closed.
• County liquor stores: Closed.
• Recreation: All programs and facilities
closed.

Kensington residents (from left) Diana and Gary Ditto talk with Sam Statland during “Party Arty,” the 28th annual Montgomery County Executive’s Ball to beneﬁt the arts and humanities Sunday at the Montgomery County
Conference Center in North Bethesda.

Yudee Chang of Potomac (left) takes Mimi Tse of Chevy Chase for a spin on the dance ﬂoor at Party Arty on
Sunday.

About a month ago, three
20-something entrepreneurs
launched a website that some
users say helps them learn information about health insurance
plans more easily than the federal government’s healthcare.
gov site that an army of workers
has developed for years.
Co-founders of the privately
run site, TheHealthSherpa.com,
include Potomac native Michael
Wasser. The Seattle resident majored in computer science and
economics at the University of
Maryland, College Park.
“We aren’t trying to compete
with the federal government’s
site,” said Wasser, 26. “We have
different goals in that we are
mainly providing information
and don’t sign up people. You
can’t really compare the two.”
The site essentially takes
government information on
health plans and makes it easier
for people to access, he said.
The company doesn’t just rely
on government sources but collects other information such
as details on co-payments and
deductibles, as well as provides
information on insurers for users to contact directly.
Since launching, the site has
seen traffic rise dramatically,
with about 2 million page views
in the past three weeks, he said.
Wasser and co-founders George
Kalogeropoulos, 28, and Ning
Liang, 27, have already been
featured on CBS News, Fox
Business News and other media
outlets.
Yale University graduates
Kalogeropoulos and Liang live
in the San Francisco area, where
the ﬂedgling business is based.
“I can work fine remotely
from Seattle,” said Wasser, who
met his partners through a
friend about nine months ago.
A New Hampshire woman,
who praised the site as “much
easier” to use than the government one, said on the CBS newscast that she “was not surprised”
three guys in their 20s could devise an easier site to access than

the federal government.
The trio recently met with
Bryan Sivak, chief technology
officer of the Department of
Health and Human Services, to
discuss their website and how
they can help people learn more
about the plans. This month,
U.S. Sen. Angus King Jr., an independent from Maine, urged
residents to use HealthSherpa
as a temporary alternative for
those experiencing difﬁculties
with the federal site.
More than 30 states do not
have their own sites and exchange markets, and residents
there must use the federal site.
The rest, including Maryland,
have their own sites.
“HealthSherpa offers a userfriendly platform to quickly
browse through available health
insurance plan options, including monthly premium costs,
coverage plans and possible premium subsidies,” King said in a
statement. “I recommend that
Mainers who are having trouble
with Healthcare.gov use HealthSherpa as a temporary alternative until the federal website
functions properly.”
The Maryland site, MarylandHealthConnection.gov,
also has had its share of technical difﬁculties. In its ﬁrst month
of operation in October, about
1,300 people signed up for private health plans, below the
pace of some states with fewer
residents such as Vermont and
Connecticut.
But the pace has picked up
in November. Almost 1,000 people in Maryland enrolled for private plans from Nov. 3 through
Nov. 16. Ofﬁcials have a goal of
signing up 150,000 by March 31.

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Facing a growing number
of young children, Montgomery
County needs to look beyond
government funding to expand
high-quality early childhood
care and education, according
to a member of a county group
studying the issue.
Montgomery County Public
Schools ofﬁcials have recently
emphasized the system’s rapidly
growing enrollment, especially
in elementary schools — a large
group of children who need services before they start kindergarten.
Janine Bacquie — director
of Montgomery County Public Schools’ Division of Early

Childhood Programs and Services and co-chairwoman of
the Montgomery County Early
Childhood Advisory Council
— said the county needs additional, sustainable funds immediately to not only ensure there
is enough space in public and
private child care and education
programs but that the programs
are also high quality.
“The numbers and the
needs are signiﬁcantly increasing,” Bacquie said. “We need to
scale up signiﬁcantly.”
Superintendent Joshua P.
Starr recently said that since
2007, the county school system
has grown by 14,000 students;
another 11,000 are expected
over the next six years.
The school system is “seeing
enormous elementary enrollment growth across the district,”
he said.
Though the county’s popu-

lation has grown, state funding
has remained stagnant, she said.
The county budgeted about
$3 million for its early childhood
services program in ﬁscal 2014,
said Mary Anderson, a spokeswoman for the county health and
human services department.
The advisory council is looking at how the county can continue developing its care and
education services for children
from the time they are born to
the time they enter school. The
council members include representatives from the county
school system, the county health
and human services department, the Maryland State Department of Education and area
organizations related to child
care, among others.
The county’s early learning
efforts haven’t had any “large
funders” in the past aside from
state and county government,

she said.
Bacquie said the county
needs to explore options such
as businesses, philanthropic
sources and social impact
bonds.
Bacquie said funding needs
to increase in part to keep up
with the county’s efforts to
train providers and help them
improve their quality and gain
accreditation. Funds are also
needed to fuel more direct services to children and families,
including homevisiting services,
increasing programs accessible
to children with disabilities and
expanding access to low-income
families that don’t currently
meet the guidelines necessary
to enter public prekindergarten.
It’s important that children
have access to early childhood
programs that can help prepare
them socially, academically,
physically and otherwise for
school and beyond, she said.
In the 2012-13 school year,

1894574

1912609

1906174

about 80 percent of Montgomery County children entering
kindergarten were “fully schoolready,” according to data from
the Maryland Model for School
Readiness assessment.
While this marks a signiﬁcant
improvement from county data
about a decade earlier, Bacquie
said the remaining 20 percent
“represents a lot of students.”
Montgomery received about
$145,000 from the state’s Race
to the Top Early Learning Challenge Grant program, the focus
of a Nov. 7 meeting with members of the County Council and
county school board and state
education ofﬁcials.
Some county council members raised concerns that the
county did not receive more
grant money.
The state education ofﬁcials
said, however, that the grant
funds were designated to help
counties develop their early
learning infrastructure, much of

which Montgomery already has.
Elizabeth Kelley — director
of the ofﬁce of child care in the
state education department’s
division of early childhood development — said there are a lot
of unanswered questions when
it comes to future funding for the
county’s early learning systems
after the grant program ends.
“That’s why it’s so critically
important for the local councils to identify where funds can
come from,” Kelley said.
Government, she said, will
not always be the answer for
funding.
Councilwoman Valerie Ervin (D-Dist. 5) of Silver Spring
told the state education ofﬁcials
that the fast-growing county
needs state help.
“We have issues facing this
county that are extraordinary
by anybody’s measurement so
we’re just looking for a little bit
of assistance where we can get
it,” Ervin said.

THE GAZETTE

Wednesday, November 27, 2013 b

Council
races are
attracting
new blood
n

What goes up ...

Daly seeks at-large seat;
Bolourian running
in District 2
BY

RYAN MARSHALL
STAFF WRITER

Two candidates with experience on the fringes of presidential politics have joined the race
for spots on the Montgomery
County Council.
Gaithersburg Democrat
Neda Bolourian has ﬁled to run
for the District 2 seat currently
held by Council Vice President
Craig Rice, while Dickerson
Democrat Beth Daly will run for
one of the council’s four at-large
seats.
Democratic Central Committee member Vivian Malloy
of Olney will run as an at-large
candidate, while Silver Spring
community activist Evan Glass
recently announced that he’ll
run as a Democrat for the District
5 seat currently held by Councilwoman Valerie Ervin (D).
While both Bolourian and
Daly are relative novices to running for ofﬁce, both have gathered experience working on
major political campaigns.
Daly, 51, directed a team in
charge of buying advertising for
Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential
campaign and also worked on
Clinton’s 1996 re-election, and
worked as a staffer for former
Ohio Sen. Howard Metzenbaum
(D).
Bolourian, 31, worked for
President Barack Obama’s 2008
and 2012 campaigns.
She ran for the House of Delegates from District 15 in 2006,
but withdrew shortly after ﬁling
because of an illness in her family.
Bolourian, an attorney who
works in Bethesda, said she has
always been interested in public
policy.
“I adore politics, but mostly
I’ve always been interested in
public service,” she said.
She said she was partly motivated to run by the income disparity in Montgomery County.
While she was in law school
at the University of the District
of Columbia, she worked with
low-income people at a variety
of clinics.
She sees lots of her friends
in the county working multiple
jobs and still barely getting by,
she said.
Bolourian was also motivated by the council’s decision
to approve a pay increase for the
council seated in 2014, which
she said was troubling given the
current economic situation in
the county.
A native of Damascus who
attended Damascus High
School, Bolourian would also
like to focus on addressing mental health and substance abuse
issues, the possibility of lowering income and property taxes,
ﬁnding more funding for no-kill
animal shelters.
Rice said having an opponent wouldn’t really change
the way he campaigns for 2014,
which he said he plans to make
more active in January or February.
Daly, the director of political
sales in Telemundo’s Washington, D.C., ofﬁces, plans to focus
her campaign on issues such as
affordable housing, responsible
growth and trafﬁc and transportation.
She lived in downtown
Bethesda before she was married and now lives in Dickerson,
and said she hopes to use that
experience of having lived both
upcounty and downcounty to
bring a fresh perspective to the
council.
The current council hasn’t
done a good enough job of balancing growth with the police,
ﬁre, education, roads and other
public infrastructure necessary
to support it, she said.
Growth is an issue from
Clarksburg to Chevy Chase, not
an upcounty or downcounty issue, and the council would beneﬁt from more perspective on
upcounty issues, she said.
The council’s at-large seats
currently held by Democrats
Marc Elrich, Nancy Floreen,
George Leventhal and Hans
Riemer.
rmarshall@gazette.net

PHOTOS BY DAN GROSS/THE GAZETTE

Right: Alyssa Littlestone (left) of Naval Surface Warfare Carderock in Bethesda and Stacy Levy, a math
teacher at Thomas W. Pyle Middle School in Bethesda, drop an egg with protection engineered by Pyle
students from two stories high at the federal installation. This egg did not survive the drop in the third
annual Egg Drop Competition, held Nov. 20. Above: Pyle students Bethesda wait for an egg to fall during
the competition. The Carderock facility runs the competition to promote science, technology, engineering
and mathematics education in the schools.

132642G

Page A-7

The Gazette
OUROPINIONS

Forum

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

|

Page A-8

Joint
discussions

Gubernatorial candidate Heather Mizeur earned
some political buzz last week when she announced
that if she becomes governor in next November’s
elections, she’ll try to legalize marijuana in Maryland. She proposes that the state regulate it and tax
it, much like the state regulates and taxes alcohol.
She estimated a pot tax would boost state coffers
by some $157.5 million, an oddly exact ﬁgure.
Meanwhile, state Sen. Jamie Raskin said he’ll introduce legislation in the 2014 session — 11 months
before the election — to do the same thing. Colorado and Washington state have done it. Maryland,
which afﬁrmed same-sex marriage by referendum,
would seem to be a good candidate to sign on.
Neither Mizeur nor Raskin provide many details
of what happens when someone performs an act
legalized by the state, but still criminalized by the
federal government. Though the Obama administration may have little appetite for a cannabis prosecution, who knows how long that will last.
Even so, both Mizeur and Raskin deserve credit
for bringing the issue forward and starting a dialogue of where the state should be heading. Even
right-leaning, law-and-order Marylanders can question the value of keeping the status quo. Prohibition
of alcohol didn’t work; there’s little evidence that
pot prohibition is working either. By the same token, even right-leaning, libertarian-minded voters
should ponder how legalization will affect vulnerable populations, particularly young people.
Of the two proposals, one can safely expect
Raskin’s legislation won’t go very far. As liberal as
the state is, it’s made paltry advances on medical
marijuana. To think the General Assembly and Gov.
Martin O’Malley will overturn prohibition is a pipe
dream.
Mizeur at least has a gubernatorial campaign to
present her proposal. She can bypass the General
Assembly, where members will be worried about
re-election, and directly address Democrats who will
pick the party’s next nominee. With the economy
and health care likely to be pressing issues, it’s unlikely that marijuana policy will take center stage,
but the discussion gives the candidates and the public a chance to ponder and shape future policy.

One world, thankful

Jan. 1 is the traditional time when we declare
how we can improve our ways. But Thanksgiving, as
a feast of plenty, is a better time to take stock.
On Twitter, some people jokingly tag their minor
complaints with “#FirstWorldProblems” — Starbucks is a mile away, there’s no WiFi on a camping
trip, the toilet seat is cold. “I now have 4 phones,”
someone posted on Monday.
For many people around the world, though, the
bottom level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is frequently out of reach — clean water, sufﬁcient food,
reliable shelter.
Water.org, a website devoted to information
about water and its availability, says 780 million
people lack access to clean water — more than 2½
times the population of the United States.
“An American taking a ﬁve-minute shower uses
more water than the average person in a developing
country slum uses for an entire day,” the site says.
And more people have a mobile phone than a
toilet, the site tells us. First World Problems, indeed.
In one of the wealthiest counties in Earth’s richest nation, we shouldn’t forget that our potholes on
the road to daily happiness are relatively insigniﬁcant.
The death toll from Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines had climbed past 5,200.
People in the U.S. and abroad are struggling
with natural and human-induced disasters and
warfare. Thousands of American service members have died since this country went to war in
Afghanistan and Iraq, and in other operations
around the globe.
We summarize these grim and distressing ﬁgures
only to remind ourselves to keep our collective perspective on what matters as we count our blessings
this holiday season.
For too many, Thanksgiving is a starting pistol
for a season of determined power shopping. We
saw this sentiment captured in an Associated Press
photo of a man standing in line at an Illinois appliance store. The man was resting his head dreamily,
eyes closed, on the prize in his embrace — a new
video game system.
It’s easy to get caught up in the shopping frenzy
while looking for a blockbuster gift. But please keep
the plight of all walks of humanity in mind as we approach this holiday season. We have it pretty good,
and for that, each day, we should be grateful.

The Gazette
Karen Acton,
President/Publisher

LETTERS TOT HE EDITOR

There’s no place like home for health care
Over the past few years, the United
States health care system has gone through
a groundbreaking shift to create a more efﬁcient, cost-effective and health-focused system of care for all Americans. Yet it’s failing
to help an integral part of the system that can
assist in reducing costs and provide vital care
that our parents and grandparents will beneﬁt
from as they age.
While most people associate hospitals and
physicians with health care, each year millions
of Americans receive health services in their
homes that can include skilled nursing, physical therapy, social work and nursing aide care
to assist with their daily activities of living.
Studies have shown that home care is the
most cost-effective setting for patients in need
of continued health care after their hospital
discharge. Home care can dramatically reduce
burdensome costs for patients suffering from
illnesses such as heart failure, joint replacements and strokes as well as prevent hospital
readmissions.
Avalere Health, a Washington consulting
group, reported that chronically ill patients
who received home care services experienced
fewer hospital readmissions than patients
who received other post-acute services. Furthermore, these fewer readmissions resulted

in an estimated $670 million in Medicare cost
savings over a three-year period.
Despite the essential nature of home care
in the changing world of health care, not-forproﬁt organizations, like Adventist Home Care
Services, have borne the brunt of federal budget cuts for the past several years. Even though
Medicare payments to home care are only a
small portion of Medicare’s total expenditures, the home care industry has taken on a
signiﬁcant and disproportionate amount of
the Medicare reductions over the past several
years.
These cuts put 3.5 million Medicare beneﬁciaries receiving home-care services at risk
of losing their access to this care because there
will be fewer providers who can afford to continue to care for these patients.
Home care agencies like Adventist Home
Care Services, which has provided services to
the Washington Metropolitan region for more
than 40 years, would still provide care to patients, but be paid less than the cost of care for
most of them.
Without home care, some of these patients
may end up back in the hospital or in other
health-care facilities such as nursing homes.
Ultimately, any immediate savings may end
up costing our health-care system more down

the road as home-care patients are forced to
seek medical care elsewhere.
Our parents and grandparents are the
ones who will suffer from these decisions in
Washington. According to the latest census,
seniors make up the largest population in the
United States. As the 77 million baby-boomers
continue to age, our health care system must
ﬁnd efﬁcient and cost-effective ways to meet
their needs.
While the Affordable Care Act will improve
services for many Americans, home-care leaders expect our political leaders to ﬁnd ways to
better utilize home-care services and ensure
their long-term viability. If we can accomplish
this, I believe we can create a win-win situation for patients and our health care system.
As health care shifts to a system that is designed to incentivize day-to-day wellness and
reduce hospital readmissions, the home-care
industry is primed to be the leader in caring
for patients in the most cost-effective setting
and comfortable setting: home.

Keith Ballenger
The writer is vice president of Adventist
Home Care Services in Silver Spring and a
board member with the Maryland National
Capital Homecare Association.

Pool’s rules defy logic

Over the past year, my young
son has become an avid swimmer. In fact it has become his
primary sporting pursuit. When
our local pool closed for the winter, we began looking for a nearby
facility where he could swim after
school. We contacted Montgomery County’s Shriver Aquatic
Center in Rockville where he had
many lessons in the past. They informed us that children were not
allowed to use the open lanes at
the lap pool until after 7:30 p.m.
on weekdays. After school, the
lap pool is for the exclusive use of
adults until 7:30 pm.
This created an obvious dilemma for us because it made it
impossible for our son to swim
and get home at a reasonable
hour to go to sleep on school
days. Only after 7:30 would
Shriver allow both children and
adults to use the lap pool. This
seemed counter to what I have
encountered at various other facilities. Children are usually accommodated earlier, particularly
on school nights.
Calls to the manager at Shriver
were not returned. A call to Robin
Riley, Division Chief of Recreation,
went unanswered for over a week.
Her eventual response was a message saying they do not allow kids

during the week because there is
no demand. She then went on to
add that changing the rules to allow kids earlier at the pool might
result in all the lanes being taken
up by kids who want to swim. This
response confuses the issue of
whether there is too much demand
or not enough. Two subsequent
calls to Ms. Riley back in October
were never returned.
Messages sent to the Recreation Department through social media resulted in dismissive
responses that I was wasting my
time and there would never be a
change in policy. We were told
the Montgomery County programs and facilities were world
class and that there was no room
for improvement. I was also speciﬁcally warned not to go to the
media with this issue.
It became clear that the primary reason for not changing
the policy was likely the (minimal) effort involved. Though this
slight adjustment in policy would
not cost Montgomery County
any money, those in charge of the
aquatic center have made it clear
they are not interested in any
modiﬁcations — no matter what
the reason.
We are simply asking that
kids be allowed some access to

the open lanes during the week
at a reasonable hour. The adults
who wish to use the lanes would
still be able to use them. Having
an adult hour is ﬁne as well. It just
doesn’t seem fair to ban kids who
really want to swim from these
public pools Monday through
Friday.
Finding no understanding or
compassion at our county facility
or with the county representatives, we were forced to seek out
the Rockville City Pool. At the
Rockville pool, the lap lanes are
open to all irrespective of age.
This raised the question of how
the Rockville City Pool was able
to work out their schedule to be
so inclusive while the self-proclaimed world class Montgomery County facilities could only
manage if they barred certain
residents.
Public policy should always
lead and not follow. Rules that
have been around “too long to
change” are never fully addressing the needs of the community.
When we tell kids they don’t
matter, we need to be ready for
them to say the same when we
are older and no longer the decision makers.

So Gus Bauman, former
head of Maryland-National
Park and Planning Commission
and land-use expert, has suddenly woken up to the fact that
neither the commission nor the
County Council have required
the developers of downtown
Silver Spring to set aside any
green space for the thousands
of new residents? Where were
you, Gus, when this was going
on? And does anyone think a
dog park replacing one of the
few facilities for the mentally ill
(Adrienne House), as the current Commission is considering, is the “green space” Silver
Spring needs?
The planners and politicians who have let Silver Spring
develop with no set-aside for
parks or the schools that these
new residents are going to need
are many dollars short and
many years late. Who is now
going to ﬁx this disaster?

Once in a lifetime holiday: Thanksgivukkah
Convergence of
Thanksgiving, Hanukkah
hasn’t happened since 1888
n

BY TERRI HOGAN
AND PEGGY MCEWAN
STAFF WRITERS

What do you get when you combine
Thanksgiving and Hanukkah?
Thanksgivukkah? Or maybe
Thanks-a-latkes?
This is the year to make the most of
the convergence of the two holidays. It
hasn’t happened since 1888 and it will
not happen again “in our lifetime,” said
Rabbi Bentzy Stolik, director of Chabad
of Olney.
“It’s impossible to determine if it
will ever happen again,” Stolik said.
“Hanukkah follows the Jewish calendar,
which is based on a lunar system, but
the number of months changes every
two or three years to catch up with the
Gregorian calendar.”

TRAIL

Continued from Page A-1
questioned whether an underground tunnel was a good idea at
all, pointing out that a newly constructed tunnel would be much
smaller than the existing one.
“This is going to be a smaller,
less light tunnel,” Dreyfuss said.
“You’re not going to see the
other end of it.”

PARK

Continued from Page A-1
new road alignment for an unnamed tenant, Yearwood said.
In response, Montgomery
County Public Schools and its
board of education decided the
White Flint Neighborhood Park
would be a better site, with both
the community and the school’s
students using part of the park as
playing ﬁelds, Crispell said.
Not so easy to do, said
Brooke Farquhar, supervisor of
park and trail planning of the

With the annual changing of
Thanksgiving Day, which is celebrated
the fourth Thursday of November, it’s
easy to see that the turkey might not
catch up with the lighting of the menorah candles again for a long, long time.
“I’ve heard it will next happen in
about 7,000 years,” said Ruth Lamberty, director of jconnect, a service of
the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington.
Hanukkah actually begins at sundown Wednesday, with the traditional
celebration of the lighting of the ﬁrst
candle of the eight-day festival, a traditional meal and, for many, sharing of
gifts.
Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the Jerusalem Temple, desecrated by occupying invaders more
than 2,100 years ago.
“Upon recapturing the temple from
the Syrian Greeks, the Jewish people
found only one jar of pure oil, enough
to burn only one day, but it lasted miraculously for eight days until new, pure
olive oil was produced,” according to a

press release from Chabad of Olney. “In
commemoration of this event, the Jewish people celebrate Hanukkah for eight
days by lighting an eight-branched candelabra known as a menorah. The menorah is placed in highly visible place to
publicize the miracle, with its message
of hope and religious freedom, to all.”
Thanksgiving — which, according to tradition, was ﬁrst celebrated in
1621 in Plymouth, Mass. — celebrates
the providence of the previous year
and the bounty of the harvest. It did not
become an ofﬁcial holiday until 1863
when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday to be celebrated each November.
In 1941, Congress ofﬁcially declared
the fourth Thursday in November as
Thanksgiving Day.
Both holidays are about food, family and friends, Lamerty said, and many
families will combine traditions on
Thursday.
“I am making sweet potato latkes
and pumpkin doughnuts,” she said.
“The tradition behind them [as Hanuk-

kah foods] is that they are both cooked
in oil, something we use to commemorate the miracle of the oil in the
temple.”
She also plans to serve turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes, but will make
a cranberry applesauce this year because applesauce is traditionally served
with latkes, which are fried pancakes,
usually made with white potatoes.
“I’m trying to make it fun,” she said.
So are many others. Online, celebrants can purchase Thanksgivukkah
T-shirts and aprons picturing both a
turkey and a menorah, notecards featuring a turkey behind a dreidel — the
traditional Hanukkah spinning top
— and one mimicking Grant Wood’s
classic painting, “American Gothic,”
showing the farmer holding a menorah. There is even a menurkey, a turkeyshaped menorah.
As many around the county toast
the day with one tradition or another or
a combination of the two, there is only
one thing to be said:
Gobbletov!

PHOTO FROM CYNDI GLASS

Kyle Silberman (left), 5, and brother Michael,
7, of Silver Spring work on their “menurkey,” a
turkey-shaped menorah they made out of clay and
painted for a joint celebration of Hanukkah and
Thanksgiving. Their grandmother Cyndi Glass of
Brookeville helped them with the project and will
host the family’s Thanksgiving/Hanukkah celebration at her home.

He questioned how many
people are going to feel comfortable walking through a narrow,
darker 225-foot long tunnel.
“I’m very uncomfortable
recommending the county
spend 20 million on a tunnel
they could build on the street,”
he said.
But Casey Anderson, who
also sits on the board, said the
county had promised an underground tunnel and needed to

keep that promise.
The credibility of the county
is on the line, Anderson said,
who used to serve on the Washington Area Bicyclist Association
board.
Since 1994, the plan has
been to have the Capital Crescent Trail go through the existing tunnel, said Rose Krasnow,
deputy director of the planning
department.
But that turned out to be

very difficult and costly, she
said, running about $40 million.
But the Maryland Transit
Administration realized a trail
could be underground if the
Apex building was demolished.
“There’s a huge contingency
of people out there who would
like to see an underground trail,”
Krasnow said.
Without tearing down the
Apex building, the Purple Line’s
station platform would have to

ﬁt into the existing tunnel, planners have said, and there would
be no room for the Capital Crescent Trail. If the tunnel is rebuilt,
it can be widened to make it
safer and more accommodating
for passengers and the trail.
However, the owners of the
building, the American Society
of Health-System Pharmacists,
have expressed grave doubts
about relocating their business
and razing the building.

The county has until the
end of the year to persuade the
owners to move and demolish
the building, which is when the
Maryland Transit Administration has said it wants an answer
on the issue.
On Dec. 5, the board will
meet again to approve the
amendment and then send it to
the County Council.

Montgomery County Department of Parks.
“None of the park is ﬂat,”
Farquhar told the group. That
makes construction tough and
traditional playing ﬁelds nearly
impossible. Much of the park is
wooded and serves as a buffer
between a residential neighborhood and the mall.
Crispell said the school board
was willing to compromise — that
both sites were less than ideal,
but at least building inside the
park would mean future students
would have some outdoor space,
as opposed to the mall site, where

theywouldnot.Headmittedsome
trees would have to be felled, but
urged the audience to think of future students. The school would
not be built for at least 10 years,
he said.
Crispell told the group that
the school board was interested
in acquiring as much land as
possible and pocketing it for future use and future growth. With
9,800 new housing units being
built in the White Flint area, it’s
only a matter of time until a new
school is needed, he said.
Del. Al Carr, (D-Dist.18) who
lives in Kensington, described

the school board as “desperate
to grab a site.”
He argued that the county
should “put a school where its
best suited and not just because
someone happens to be developing there.”
If the school board is successful, locals argued, the neighborhood would essentially lose
one of the last green spaces in an
ever-urbanizing environment.
They did not buy the idea that
the co-location or sharing would
satisfy the neighborhood’s need
for a park, since it would be offlimits during school hours.

“These students won’t have
a park either,” said Mike Dundon. “They’ll have an after-dark
piece of ground. We’ll all be out
there with our ﬂashlights.”
The fate of the park, and
the future of the yet-to-be-built
school, will depend largely on
how the county planning board
votes, Crispell said.
“If the planning board does
not support our request, we’ll
go back to White Flint south,” he
said. The planning board is expected to look at the issue early
next year.
The Garrett Park Estates/

White Flint Park Citizen’s Association unanimously agreed on
their own position, which will
be written in a letter to be sent
to the planning board and consists of three parts: It opposes
the school board’s suggestion
of co-locating the new school at
White Flint Neighborhood Park;
it supports the original White
Flint Sector plan, which calls for
an expansion of the park; and it
encourages the county to further
investigate other sites for the
new school.

Continued from Page A-1
middle schools: Neelsville and
Roberto Clemente in Germantown; and Francis Scott Key, A.
Mario Loiederman and Argyle,
all in Silver Spring.
It is expected to start in a
sixth next spring. Plans for a
seventh school are also in the
works.
County prosecutors and a
district court judge serve as program “judges” — adults talk with
students about the root of their
problem and how to ﬁx it.
Students meet weekly at
their school with a group of
adults that includes the program
judge, as well as school staff and
a mentor.
Schools invite students;
families decide whether a child
participates.
Students who show improvement in grades and attendance “graduate” from the
program. Those who don’t
graduate try again in the next
10-week session.
After hearing about a program started by the University of
Baltimore called Truancy Court,
Montgomery State’s Attorney
John McCarthy asked about
implementing it in Montgomery
County.
“I thought if we could take
a bite out of truancy, we would
reduce youth-related crime,” he
said.
Authorities say they don’t
have exact numbers on how
the program has helped lower
juvenile crime rates, but according to a 2009 report created for
the U.S. Department of Justice,
truants are as much as 12 times
more likely to report having
committed a serious assault, as
much as 21 times more likely
to report having committed a
serious property crime, and as
much as seven times more likely
to report having been arrested.
Unlike in Baltimore, where
many truancy court judges are
actual judges, in Montgomery
County, prosecutors ﬁll many
“judge” roles.
George Simms — the head
of the Montgomery County
state’s attorney’s ofﬁce’s Juvenile Division — is the judge at
Loiederman.
“Traditionally, prosecutors
only did one type of thing —
waited for a crime to be committed, and then prosecuted the
person accused of committing
it,” Simms said. “Our job is really
public safety. If we can do things
to help protect the community, I
think that is part of our job.”
In each of the 10 weekly
sessions, students meet with
a mentor and in the “court,”
where the judge and others provide encouragement and review
progress. They go over attendance, grades, performance and
behavior.

‘Outside people’
Steve Neff, director of pupil personnel services for the
county school system, said
the school system has seen in-

Wednesday, November 27, 2013 b

n

Review board hears cases
that didn’t improve
through intervention

BY

ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH
STAFF WRITER

When the system tries and still can’t
get kids to stop missing school, their
parents could face criminal charges.
Prosecutors estimate that in the
last year, they brought charges against
25 to 30 parents, including a recent case
in which a mother was sentenced to a
week in jail.
Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy said charges are
only ﬁled in the “most egregious cases”
of parents repeatedly refusing to follow
the law.
Truancy Court — a voluntary program in which students discuss attendance problems with a panel of school
creases in truancy.
Circumstances outside
school are a factor, Neff said.
“I think part of it,” he said,
“is having to do with some of the
challenges that families are facing” — housing, transportation,
food and ﬁnances.
Habitual truancy rates have
ﬂuctuated over recent years, according to county school system
data, but there has been a general increase.
From 2008-09 to 2012-13,
the school system’s habitual
truancy rate rose from 0.72 percent to 1.08 percent. Habitual
truants, however, are only a
fraction of the students with absentee problems.
For truants, Neff said, having
someone outside of the school
express an interest can make a
huge difference.
Sometimes, solving basic
problems does the trick. A child
can’t wake up on time: there’s
an alarm clock for that. Other
times, it’s trickier.
Steve Chaikin, an assistant
state’s attorney and the judge
at Clemente Middle in Germantown, said he had a case in
which a girl “knew this was her
last chance” after getting into
a ﬁght. He talked to the child
with her father, the school social
worker and other members of
the school’s truancy court.
Seven weeks later, she has
had nearly perfect attendance
and is passing three classes,
Chaikin said.
“My favorite point is when
we’re no longer talking about
attendance issues, but talking
about academic issues — that’s
when we know it’s working,” he
said.

Created in 2005
The Sayra and Neil Meyerhoff Center for Families,
Children and the Courts at the
University of Baltimore School
of Law created the Truancy
Court Program in 2005, accord-

ofﬁcials — is one resource county authorities use to encourage students to
stay in school.
Another is the Truancy Review
Board, which asks parents to appear
before representatives from the county’s Department of Health and Human
Services, police department, the Housing Opportunities Commission, and
other agencies.
According to a report by Montgomery County’s Ofﬁce of Legislative Oversight on truancy in Montgomery Public
Schools, “habitual truancy” is deﬁned
as students missing 18 days in a semester or 36 days of school in a school
year.
The board makes the request after
individual schools have contacted parents and made other efforts to get students in school, Montgomery County
Assistant State’s Attorney Curt Zeager
said.
Steve Neff, the director of pupil
personnel services for Montgomery

County Public Schools, decides who to
call before the board.
The board lets parents share their
stories and receive help from local
agencies, including medical services or
transportation to making sure the students can go to school, Zeager said.
The process usually takes a year or
two. After that, in rare circumstances in
which problems persist, county prosecutors might charge parents criminally.
Aurea Cosme-Torres, whose current address is listed in Hyattsville, is
the mother of a girl who attends school
in Montgomery County.
Cosme-Torres recently spent a
week in jail and must serve a year of supervised probation, after her daughter
missed 48 percent of the 2012-13 school
year at Piney Branch Elementary in Silver Spring, Zeager said.
In that case, court records show, the
school contacted the mother at least 27
times to send her daughter to school
and had her appear before a truancy

review board three times.
Cosme-Torres is appealing her case
in December.
Bethan Haaga, who defended
Cosme-Torres in District Court, declined to comment about the case, citing her client’s privacy. Phone calls to
numbers listed to Cosme-Torres and
her family members in court records
were not answered.
“It’s very rare someone goes to jail.
That’s not our goal,” Zeager said.
A parent can spend up to 30 days
in jail for not sending a child to school.
That was increased recently from 10
days, he said.
Zeager said that might seem extreme, but that’s only when parents
won’t take responsibility.
“My point to defense attorneys who
say this is outrageous is: We’ve been
dealing with this for a year,” he said.
“It’s repeated irresponsibility.”
sjbsmith@gazette.net

she said. “It’s just that, I don’t
feel like it.”
The 13-year-old Argyle
Middle eighth-grader is working
on improving her attendance,
along with 14 other seventh- and
eighth-graders.
Since October, Lizbeth has

DAN GROSS/THE GAZETTE

Evelyn Joray (left), Montgomery County Public Schools pupil personnel worker, and Nilda Colgrove, county schools parent community coordinator, discuss
student issues after Truancy Court at A. Mario Loiederman Middle School in
Silver Spring.
ing to Barbara Babb, the center’s
director.
In Maryland, she said, parents can be prosecuted criminally if their children do not
attend school.
One Montgomery County
mother recently spent a week
in jail and must serve a year of
supervised probation, after her
daughter missed 48 percent of
the 2012-13 school year at Piney
Branch Elementary in Silver
Spring, Assistant State’s Attorney Curt Zeager said.
The program expanded to
Anne Arundel County in 2009
and to Montgomery and Baltimore counties in 2010.
Then, funding dried up.
The program no longer exists
in Anne Arundel and Baltimore
counties, according to Andrea
Bento, a University of Baltimore
School of Law student who
helps administer Montgomery
County’s program.
The Montgomery County
Council allocated $52,000 for
the program in ﬁscal 2013 and
$78,000 in ﬁscal 2014 to continue and expand the program.

Truancy Court administrators say they target students in
middle school because truancy
rates often jump in sixth and
ninth grades.
According to an Oct. 22
memorandum to the County
Council’s education and public
safety committees, data from
Neelsville and Francis Scott
Key showed an overall program
graduation rate of 57 percent
and a reduction in participants’
unexcused absences by about 60
percent in the fall of 2012.
The same memorandum
said that about 63 percent of
participants graduated from
the program and reduced their
unexcused absences by about
69 percent in the spring of 2013
when Neelsville, Francis Scott
Key and Loiederman participated.

‘Another layer of support’
When the bell rings, Lizbeth
Molina-Urias’ first thought is
not always getting to class on
time.
“I can get on time to class,”

gone to truancy program
meetings each Friday.
“It’s awkward, but I go with
it,” she said. “They, like, tell me
my grades, how I’ve been. They
tell me about compliments that
my teachers say.”
Before the program, Lizbeth didn’t usually focus on her
grades, but now she works to
improve them.
Lizbeth said she writes about
missing classwork in a journal
she received through the program — one of a variety of prizes
the students can get. Students
receive small incentives if they
show improvement, according
to program administrators.
Argyle principal Robert
Dodd said his school joined because he thought it would provide “another layer of support”
for students and parents.
The 15 students in the
program had ﬁve or more unexcused absences or had “excessive tardiness” last year, he said.
A recent report from the school
shows that 10 of the 15 students
have missed no more than two
days of classes this year.
A seventh-grader who was
absent 23.5 days last year has
only been absent twice and has
a ﬁrst marking period GPA of
3.12, nearly a full point higher
than the student’s GPA for the
fourth marking period last year.
Tiffany Awkard, assistant
principal at Clemente, said the
seventh- and eighth-grade students in the school’s ﬁrst-ever
session this fall were absent
about 15 to 25 times last school
year.
Awkard said that for many
Clemente students in the program, truancy stems from aca-

demic issues. Some students
don’t want to go to class because
they’re not performing well.
Awkard said the school already had seen an improvement
in students’ attendance and attitude.
At Neelsville, Principal Vicky
Lake-Parcan said about a dozen
out of 30 potential students from
all three grades are participating.
Some Neelsville students
have said they don’t attend
school because they don’t feel
well. Others have anxiety issues
or are responsible for getting
themselves up and ready for
school, she said.
“If they’re not feeling successful or feeling like this isn’t
where they want to be, it’s really
easy for them to just stay in bed
and not come to school,” she
said.
Lake-Parcan said the program addresses absenteeism
and truancy before a student
goes to the county Truancy
Review Board, a multi-agency
group that can refer parents of
truant children to the state’s attorney’s ofﬁce.

‘Unlimited potential’
On Nov. 20, during the last
day of their program session,
Clemente students met with
Chaikin and others for final
thoughts on their progress.
Most participating students
graduated from Clemente’s
program on Nov. 20. Two will
continue in the next program
session starting in January.
The students who graduated reduced their number of
unexcused absences by at least
65 percent.
“You all now have the tools
to be successful, to be on time,
to do well,” Chaikin told them.
“You all have one thing in common: unlimited potential.”
sjbsmith@gazette.net
lpowers@gazette.net

All “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire”
had to do was show up. Page A-16

www.gazette.net

|

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

|

Page A-11

THEATER

And a partridge in a pear tree
n

Award-winning playwright brings fresh
take to holiday classic
BY

CARA HEDGEPETH
STAFF WRITER

In college, actor and director Michael Dove
used to get nervous before going on stage. So
nervous in fact, that he’d become physically ill.
“I would get really sick before every show,
particularly a show that I had the lead in,” Dove
said. “I would throw up every single night before the show.”

Plenty of actors get nervous before going
on stage to face an audience full of strangers,
but Dove’s stage was the Children’s Playshop
at James Madison University and his audience
was a room full of children. So why the nerves?
“When you do a show like, let’s say ‘Agnes Under the Big Top,’” a play Dove directed
at Round House Theatre earlier this year, ”if
someone doesn’t like the show, you’re never
going to know that. They’re not going to get
bored and start standing up and down in their
chairs. I was always nervous about performing

See PARTRIDGE, Page A-15

PHOTO BY MIKE HORAN

Danny Pushkin and Diedra LaWan Starnes star in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” at Adventure Theatre-MTC.

Shall WE

BY

STAFF WRITER

DANCE?
Romantic tension at the heart of
classic Broadway musical

Paolo Montalban
as The King and
Eileen Ward as
Anna in Olney
Theatre Center’s
production of
“The King and I.”

Bethesda
Stamp Art
Director Ethel
Kessler and
Alexandria
photographer
George Brown
worked together with the U.S.
Postal Service
to release
the Hanukkah
stamp.
2013 U.S. POSTAL
SERVICE

1912604

Whirling around a dance ﬂoor
in a skirt that weighs 40 pounds is
only part of actress Eileen Ward’s job
playing Anna in the Olney Theatre
Center’s production of “The King
and I.”
“It has a hoop the size of a truck,”
laughed Ward. “When I go backstage,
people have to get out of the way, or
I’ll be walking right over them.”
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s
Broadway musical, complete with
elaborate costumes and beautiful
music, runs to Dec. 29 at the theater.
“They’re really pulling out all the
stops — the show requires it!” said
Mark Waldrop, who is directing “The
King and I” for the ﬁrst time.
A stage veteran, Waldrop has
directed four other shows for Olney

See MUSICAL, Page A-15

THE KING AND I

Classic musical abounds with roles for children
“The King and I,” running to Dec. 29 at the Olney Theatre Center, is a Broadway classic that uses a
large cast of young children and teenagers.
Henry Niepoetter, 12, of College Park, and Ian
Berlin, 13, of Chevy Chase, share the role of Anna’s
son, Louis.

VIRGINIA TERHUNE

n When: To Dec. 29 (see website for
showtimes)

“It’s the biggest role I’ve had so far — it’s my ﬁrst
big acting part,” said Niepoetter, who also has performed with the Adventure Theatre in Glen Echo.
Niepoetter credits “an amazing father” who

Paolo Montalban as The King in Olney Theatre
Center’s production of “The King and I.”

HANUKKAH FOREVER

n

Wrought-iron menorah used for new USPS
Hanukkah stamp
BY

WILL C. FRANKLIN
STAFF WRITER

Most people wouldn’t really stop to think about
spending 46 cents. For that matter, most folks probably aren’t too concerned about something that costs 46
cents.
Ethel Kessler, though, put a lot of time and effort into

something that only costs 46 cents, but will last forever.
Bethesda resident Kessler, who is the stamp art director for the United States Postal Service, worked with Alexandria, Va., photographer George Brown to create the
new Hanukkah stamp just in time for the holiday season.
So far in her career, Kessler has designed more than
300 stamps for the USPS. This is her third Hanukkah
stamp. With more than 25 years of experience designing for clients such as the Clinton/Gore White House,
the Smithsonian and more, Kessler said she had no idea

See HANUKKAH, Page A-15

T H E G AZ ET T E

Page A-12

Wednesday, November 27, 2013 b

ERIN GIFFORD

Kurt Boehm as Lyle and David Landstrom as Joshua in the musical
“Lyle the Crocodile” at Imagination Stage to Jan. 10.

Rockin’ reptile
“Lyle the Crocodile” dances onto stage and into audiences’
imaginations to Jan. 10 at Imagination Stage in Bethesda.
When the Primm family discovers a crocodile living in the
bathtub of their New York City apartment, its an adjustment
to say the least. But it’s nothing compared to their nasty neighbor, Mr. Grumps, who has it out for the reptile. Can Lyle save
the day and earn his place as a beloved friend and neighbor?
For tickets and show times, visit www.imaginationstage.org.

MARIAN MACKERER

“Bottle Tops,” oil on canvas by Marian MacKerer.

Pop
ART

Contemporary still life painter Marian MacKerer will be the featured
artist for December at the Montgomery Art Association Gallery at Westﬁeld Wheaton Mall. An opening reception is scheduled from 1-5 p.m. Dec.
8. MacKerer has been working in oil for six years. She strives for capturing
three-dimensional qualities on a ﬂat canvas, emphasizing light and shadows to capture a realistic still life, and uses a bold palette, staging her compositions with everyday objects. Utilizing both large and small formats,
MacKerer tells a story through her compositions to connect the viewer to
familiar memories. For more information, visit www.montgomeryart.org.

The suite life

PHOTO BY CHRISTOPHER PIPER

The Nutcracker defends Clara-Marie against the Mouse King and his minions in The Puppet Co.’s presentation of
“The Nutcracker.”

“The Nutcracker” returns to
the Puppet Co. Playhouse from
Nov. 29 to Dec. 29 at Glen Echo
Park, 7300 MacArthur Boulevard,
Glen Echo. Show times vary. The
company’s rendition of the classic tale was commissioned by the
Arlington Symphony to perform
with its live orchestra in 1988.
The following year it opened
at the Puppet Co. Playhouse in
what turned out to be an annual
tradition for 25 years. For more
information, including tickets and
show times, visit www.thepuppetco.org.

DANISHA CROSBY

Kimberly Gilbert as Lisa, Naomi Jacobson as Rita and John Lescault as
Ben in the Round House Theatre production of “The Lyons.”

‘Lyons’ den
Nicky Silver’s “The Lyons” continues to Dec. 22 at the
Round House Theatre in Bethesda. Directed by John Vreeke,

the area premiere follows indomitable matriarch Rita Lyons as
she faces a major crossroads. Her husband is dying, her son is
in a dubious relationship and her daughter is barely holding it
together. Tempers ﬂare, words are exchanged and secrets are
revealed. Worst of all, Rita can’t ﬁgure out how to redesign her
living room. For more information, including tickets and show
times, visit www.roundhousetheatre.org.

Depending on the gig, the
Sultans of String can range from
a duo to a 60-member ensemble.
“A lot of times, Kevin [Laliberté] and I will jump in the Civic
and do a duo tour,” said band
leader and violinist Chris McKhool. “Sometimes we’ll be out
as a trio and then, for really big
shows, we go out as a quartet.
Once in a while we’ll perform
with a symphony orchestra and
add 60 players to the mix.”
When the Sultans of String
perform at the Mansion at
Strathmore on Dec. 5, they’ll
be a quartet — McKhool on
vocals and violin, Laliberté on
guitar, Drew Briston on bass
and Chendy Leon on percussion. The Strathmore show is
the second stop on the ensemble’s mini-tour promoting their
fourth album, “Symphony!”

KEVIN KELLY

The Sultans of String (from left): Kevin Laliberté, Eddie Paton (who plays
Nylon guitar on “Symphony!”), Drew Briston, Chendy Leon and Chris McKhool.
released in September. Other
stops include New York City,
Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
This is only the second visit
to the Washington, D.C., area
for the Toronto-based Sultans.
The band just started touring
the U.S. a few years ago, and
has recently gained recognition
stateside after playing several
Folk Alliance Conferences.
The Sultans of String have
already developed a following
in their native Canada for their
style of musical fusion featuring a
blend of Spanish Flamenco, Arabic folk, Cuban rhythms, Celtic
sounds and French Gypsy Jazz.
The son of a pianist, McK-

hool grew up listening to classical music. His mother, who also
taught piano out of the family’s
home, wanted McKhool and his
two older siblings to play a musical instrument.
“My older brother and sister
were already playing the piano
so [my mom] thought it would
be good for [me] to play the violin,” McKhool said.
By high school, McKhool
had started listening to Joni
Mitchell and Neil Young and
had even begun teaching himself folk songs on the guitar.
When he moved to Toronto,
McKhool said he started listening to violinists like Hugh Marsh

who were pushing the boundaries on the violin.
“Hugh Marsh ... he was the
ﬁrst violinist I heard playing alternative violin styles,” McKhool
said. “It almost sounded more
like a horn player, or a sax player
than a violinist.”
The Sultans of String formed
six years ago, though their unofﬁcial introduction was practically a mistake.
“I met Kevin and Drew about
10 years ago but in a different
context,” McKhool said. “Kind of
a jazz group context. I was leading
a jazz quartet ... and I heard Kevin
warming up on his guitar, playing
Rumba and Flamenco.”
McKhool was immediately
intrigued.
“The ﬁrst time hearing it was
pretty exciting,” he said. “It was
my ﬁrst time really hearing a
Rumba rhythm kind of up close
and personal. I had heard it on
the radio.”
Soon, McKhool, Laliberté and
Briston were playing together at a
small venue in Toronto.
“Not that many people were
listening to us, so we had a lot of
freedom,” McKhool said. “We
spent most of the time making

music up on the spot; spontaneous composition. And some of
these songs that we made up on
the spot have become some of
our greatest songs.”
The Sultans of String have
recorded four albums, the latest
a “roots classical crossover” featuring a hand-picked symphony
orchestra.
“[It’s] a 55-piece pick-up
symphony orchestra,” McKhool
said. “We cherry-picked our favorite players.”
According to McKhool, the
Sultans of String, who have
been hailed “Canada’s ambassadors of musical diversity,”
are always interested in trying
new sounds.
Living in Toronto it’s very easy
tohearsomanydifferentstylesand
influences from around the world,
McKhool said. “We really like to tell
stories through our music about
the people we meet and the places
we travel to ... [There’s] a lot of experimentation involved. We really
enjoy doing a lot of listening.”
In addition to a childhood

w
No ing!
w
Sho F.

Scott
Fitzgerald
Theater

603 Edmonston Dr.
Rockville, MD 20851

240-314-8690

www.rockvillemd.gov/theatre

The Nutcracker
2013
Presented by
Rockville Civic Ballet
December 7 & 14
at 2pm and 7:30pm

ﬁlled with classical music, McKhool said he was also raised on
“Canadian values” including
tolerance and acceptance. The
upbringing has helped shaped
his approach to music.
“I think it’s really about listening ... instead of trying to
change a situation ...” he said.
“The best thing we can do as
musicians is give a voice to all
kinds of music and musicians
we think are underrepresented
or under-recorded.”
chedgepeth@gazette.net

THE GAZETTE

Page A-14

Wednesday, November 27, 2013 b

Fillmore gives thanks: Venue opens doors for holiday
n

Seasonal treats, music
and more in store
BY

WILL C. FRANKLIN
STAFF WRITER

It’s that time of year again.
It’s getting a little colder outside
and the holiday season is upon
us. Many will be spending time
with their families around a table ﬁlled with turkey and stuffing this Thanksgiving.
Others, who are less fortunate, will be looking to stay
warm and for a warm meal.
In Silver Spring, the Fillmore
looks to do its part to help those
in need. The venue will open its
doors at 11 a.m. on Thanksgiving to provide seasonal treats,
music and care packages for
those in the community in need.
General manager Stephanie
Steele said this is the second year
the venue has hosted this event.
“This year, we’ve changed
up the format of the event based

on feedback we received from
our guests last year,” Steele said.
“This year, we’re going to be
featuring a live jazz band, we’re
going to be having a dessert service and warm, seasonal drinks
like apple cider and hot cocoa.
We’re going to have several care
package stations set up around
the venue.”
The stations, according to
Steele, allow people to assemble
their own care packages by choosing what products they need.
“That’s really the ‘giving’
part of giving thanks,” Steele
said. “We’re very thankful to be a
part of the Silver Spring community and we’re excited to be able
to open our doors and invite in
an audience that doesn’t always
have access to a place like ours
and to send them away with
things that will keep them warm
and will satisfy some of their
needs for the days following.”
The Fillmore has enough volunteers to help during the day,
and while the venue has received

a lot of support in the way of food
and clothing donations from the
community, Steele said they will
continue to accept all donations.
What isn’t used or given away will
be donated to Shepherd’s Table
in Silver Spring.
“The community response
has been overwhelming both
years,” Steele said. “… We’ve
been receiving tons of donations
from local businesses and residents over the last few weeks.
Now that we’re getting closer
and closer to the Thanksgiving
holiday, we’re just receiving a
wonderful response in donations every day leading up to it.”
The Fillmore will accept donations from noon until 6 p.m.
Monday through Friday leading
up to Thanksgiving. Donations
can also be dropped off while
the venue is open for a show.
Cash donations are also accepted, according to Steele.
Steele said more than a 100
people came by the venue last
year and more are expected this

year.
“It would be great if we could
double that number … this year,”
Steele said. “… We’re going to
have a big screen and our projector running and showing the
holiday parade and any other
good thing that’ll be on for folks
to watch. It’s truly an opportunity
for these guests to come in and
sit down and relax in a really welcoming atmosphere and make it
something special for them.”
wfranklin@gazette.net

Young mouseling Angelina Ballerina and her friends want to do
something nice for their community
Mouseland over the holidays, and one
of them comes up with an idea: “Let’s
put on a show!”
Each of them possessing unique
talents, they start working on song and
dance routines for everything from ballet and modern dance to tap, step and
hip-hop.
But then the costumes don’t arrive,
and they have to also work together to
overcome other obstacles in order to
save the show.
“It’s not about the gifts you receive
but the gifts you give,” said Stephen Sunderlin about the show, “Angelina Ballerina: The Very Merry Holiday Musical.”
Sunderlin is co-founder and artistic
director of the Vital Theatre Company
in New York City, which presents the
show in its Manhattan theater and also
produces touring versions.
The BlackRock Center for the Arts in

Germantown will host two performances on Saturday.
The holiday musical is based on
the “Angelina Ballerina” book series by
American writer Katharine Holabird
and English illustrator Helen Craig,
which debuted in 1983.
It tells the story of Angelina, a determined little mouse who dreams of
becoming a prima ballerina.
“She lives to dance and perform,”
said Sunderlin.
“It’s based on [Holabird’s] daughter, who would come down to breakfast

SUN PRODUCTIONS INC.

Amanda Leigh Lupacchino as Alice, Nicholas Kuhn as Az, Maria Malanga as Polly, Hillary Ekwall as Angelina, Baba Tavares as Marco and
Danelle Rivera as Gracie in a scene from “Angelina Ballerina: The Very Merry Holiday Musical.”
with a tutu on,” said Sunderlin.“She
loved dressing up.”
Vital Theatre’s stage adaptation of
the series “was such a big hit, we decided to create a holiday version of the
story,” he said.
Book and lyrics for the holiday show
are by Susan DiLallo, and the music is
by Ben Morss.
Now in its second year, the nondenominational show features a tree,

MUSICAL

CHILDREN

Continued from Page A-11
helps him learn his lines. He also
gets to sing “I Whistle a Happy
Tune” with Eileen Ward, who portrays Anna.
“Everybody loves Rodgers and
Hammerstein,” he said. “[The
King and I”] is a classic show. It’s
timeless and entertaining.”
Berlin, who performed in
“James and the Giant Peach” at
Imagination Stage last year, said
Louis is “a little kid who wants to

animals on stage,” laughed Sunderlin. “They come to the shows and they
know the characters. They have personal relationships with them.”
But Sunderlin said the performances are also something that adults
would enjoy.
“It’s like a mini-musical that happens to appeal to children,” he said.
vterhune@gazette.net

PARTRIDGE

Continued from Page A-11
— “Cinderella,” “Annie,” “The
Sound of Music” and “Little Shop
of Horrors.” When he heard the
theater was going to do “The King
and I,” he jumped at the chance to
participate.
“It’s been a real discovery,”
said Waldrop, who skipped
watching movie adaptations and
dug right into the script. He said
the story is rich with the romantic tension between Anna and the
king and also with serious themes
about the clash of cultures and
slavery.
And it has beautiful music,
he said, with songs like “Shall We
Dance?,” “Hello, Young Lovers”
and “Getting to Know You.”
The musical, which debuted
on Broadway in 1951, is based on
a 1944 book by Margaret Landon
called “Anna and the King of Siam.”
The book was a romanticized account of the life of Anna Harriet Leonowens Edwards, who grew up in
an Army family in India.
She married and had two children, and after her husband died,
she needed to ﬁnd work to support them.
In 1862, she journeyed to Siam,
which today is Thailand, to teach
English and Western culture to the
wives and children of King Mongkut (Paolo Montalban), who was
trying to modernize his country.
“He has a very inquisitive mind,
and he’s always trying to learn new
things and move forward in his
thinking,” Waldrop said.
In the musical, Anna arrives
with her son, Louis (Ian Berlin
and Henry Niepoetter in a shared
role). Nervous about what lies
ahead, she and Louis sing, “I
Whistle a Happy Tune.”
Anna meets the king and is
welcomed by the wives and the
children, who include Crown
Prince Chulalongkorn (played by
Josiah Segui).
A strong-minded modern
woman, Anna soon squares off
with the equally strong-minded
king over a promise he made that
she would have her own house.

a dreidel and cookies, but it does not
revolve around any speciﬁc tradition. It
also taps into the popularity of the book
series, which goes back 30 years.
“It’s such a well-loved brand — parents are bringing their kids,” said Sunderlin.
There are, however, no parents or
adult characters in the show, which is
geared for children 4 and older.
“Kids like to see themselves and

Continued from Page A-11

Eileen Ward as Anna and the cast of “The King and I.”

PHOTO STAN BAROUH

She continues to insist on the
house, which annoys the king —
but also intrigues him.
“What is it exactly that happens
between Anna and the king? We
wanted to explore that relationship
more [than it has been in some
other productions],” said Ward.
The king is puzzled by Anna’s
customs and ways of thinking, but
he is open to learning from her, as
long as he can do so without losing face before his subjects.
“It’s been delightful to see
how funny both characters are,”
said Waldrop about their developing relationship.
But then events take over
when the King of Burma presents
the king with a slave girl named
Tuptim (YoonJeong Seong), who
is supposed to be the king’s next
bride. But she is in love with Lun
Tha (Eymard Cabling), the young
scholar who brought her to the
Bangkok court.
Also soon to arrive at the court
are English dignitaries whom the
king thinks are planning to take
control of his country.
Believing they perceive him as
a “barbarian,” he accepts Anna’s
idea to entertain them with a
Western style ball and a play written by Tuptim based on “Uncle
Tom’s Cabin.”
The evening is a resounding
success, and the king and Anna
decide to dance.
“They discover that there’s
a mutual attraction,” said Waldrop. “They’re very high, almost

euphoric.”
But such moments can suddenly shift to moments of loss and
sorrow.
“Hammerstein seesaws between emotions without missing
a beat,” said Waldrop. “He does it
smoothly and logically, in a way
that’s not confusing.”
When faced with a challenge
to his authority, the king believes
it is his duty to punish Tuptim by
whipping her and making an example of her disobedience to his
subjects.
“He’s pushed to a place where
he feels he has to prove and fulﬁll
his role as king,” Waldrop said.
But Anna objects, causing
a rupture in their relationship,
which by now has evolved into
one of mutual respect and unspoken love for each other.
“It puts the relationship at a
breaking point,” Waldrop said.
“It’s an incredibly dramatic moment.”
“There are a lot of laughs, but
there is also conﬂict and heartbreak,” he said about the show.
Waldrop said “The King and I”
is “a great introduction to classic
Broadway musical theater.”
“I think it’s a great family
show, and an old-school musical
that really plays and really moves
[people],” he said. “It really holds
up. There are some deep themes,
and it has a tremendous amount
of heart.”

have fun.”
“He wants to spend time with
his mom, he likes to be with his
friends and he goes to school,” he
said.
For Berlin, the best part of the
musical is the Siamese dancing
in the play about “Uncle Tom’s
Cabin.”
“It’s spectacular, the masks,
the whole ballet,” he said. “That is
[for me] the ultimate scene in ‘The
King and I.’”
Josiah Segui, 15, who lives in
Gaithersburg, plays the king’s son,
Crown Prince Chulalongkorn.

A homeschooled student,
Segui said he’s studied acting
with Cathy Mays through the
Montgomery Christian Institute, and that she has prepared
him well for his ﬁrst professional
acting job.
He said he and the other actors worked with a dialogue coach
to develop their Siamese accents.
“I also get to do a lot of singing
in the scenes with the kids,” said
Segui. “They’re hilarious, they
steal the show. The audience will
deﬁnitely melt.”
— VIRGINIA TERHUNE

HANUKKAH

Continued from Page A-11
stamps would be in her future when she
ﬁrst started.
“There’s no way anyone could have
known that,” Kessler laughed. “It’s been
a really exciting adventure, because you
have to be cognizant of American history and have a passion for the creative
side.”
Brown is relatively new to the
stamp-creating world. The Hanukkah
stamp is his third overall, along with the
Vintage Seed Packets and Global Forever: Evergreen Wreath stamps, which
were all released this year. For his part,
Brown said he’s completely blown away

vterhune@gazette.net

thinking that his work will be seen and
used by millions.
“I’ve never had anything where this
many people will see anything that I’ve
ever done,” Brown said. “… I was at the
ﬁrst day of issue ceremony yesterday up
in New York … and a guy comes up to
me and says ‘You realize, of course, that
now whenever you pass on from this
world, this is going to be mentioned.’
No, I hadn’t thought about that. But
yeah, it’s going to be out there and it’s
going to be some notoriety to me in
that it’s going to be there essentially
forever.”
The Hanukkah stamp features a
photo of a wrought-iron, hand-forged
menorah, created by Vermont blacksmith Steven Bronstein. By using an-

in front of children because
you know immediately if it’s
not working.”
Hopefully Dove can avoid
the nerves — or at least getting sick — this season when
he directs “The Twelve Days
of Christmas” at Adventure
Theatre MTC. The show runs
to Dec. 30.
Based on the popular
holiday tune, “The Twelve
Days of Christmas” was
adapted and written by
award-winning playwright
Renee Calarco. After Adventure Theatre MTC producing
artistic director Michael Bobbitt approached her with the
idea, Calarco said she got to
work on an outline about six
months ago. This is not the
ﬁrst time Bobbitt has tackled offbeat source material.
The company commissioned
playwright Kevin Ludwig
in 2011 to adapt “’Twas the
Night Before Christmas,” and
in the spring, Adventure Theatre MTC produced “Three
Little Birds,” adapted from
Bob Marley’s song book.
“The interesting part of
it was once you started looking to the lyrics of the song,
there’s not a big story there,”
Calarco said. “So the challenge for me was how do you
take this song that doesn’t really have a story and make it
into a story?”
Despite a cast of colorful
characters including ladies
and lords and swans, Calarco
said she knew she would have
to focus on a central character
who would “go on a journey.”
“So I thought ... you know,
the one constant character
throughout the song is the
partridge,” Calarco said. “You
know, everybody keeps coming back to the partridge.”
“Renee Calarco is a genius,” said Deidra LaWan
Starnes, who plays Shirley,
the last in a long line of partridges responsible for pulling together the “Twelve
Days of Christmas.” “Just
the fact that she was able
to come up with a play with
a plot line from a song was
amazing to me.”
“She’s following in the
footsteps of her mother and
her grandmother and her
great-grandmother,” Calarco
said of Shirley. “It’s kind of
passing down this legacy
from thousands of years to
this one little partridge who’s
turn it ﬁnally is to do it.”
The only problem is, Shirley’s not thrilled about the

cient techniques, Bronstein used 20 feet
of iron to create the menorah.
“There’s a real process that goes on
with all stamps and the stamp design,”
Kessler said. “… The committee —
when I say committee I mean the ﬁnished stamp advisory committee — has
a procedure like, ‘OK, you’ve got the assignment, but bring us ideas about the
direction you want to take. Let us approve that and then we’ll tell you to go
ahead and with that direction.”
Kessler said everything doesn’t always work perfectly when it comes to
getting a stamp approved. Kessler and
Brown photographed several menorahs
for the stamp. Some designs featured
the use of two and even three menorahs
in one shot.

PHOTO BY MIKE HORAN

Diedra LaWan Starnes as Shirley in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” at
Adventure Theatre-MTC.
task.
“She doesn’t like the
song,” Starnes said. “She
thinks it’s old and boring.”
Like Dove, Calarco, who
has written only one other
play for children’s theater, an
adaptation of “If You Give a
Cat a Cupcake” for Adventure
Theatre MTC in 2011, noted
that creating a play for young
children brings with it a dose
of brutal honesty.
“I ﬁnd it really lovely and
it’s a great thing for writers
to write for children and especially to see how the play
plays in front of children
because kids do not have ﬁlters,” Calarco said. “If they’re
not engaged in the play, you
know it. If they’re bored, you
know it immediately.”
Starnes said the cast
has even taken turns yelling
things out at each other during rehearsal to prepare them
for what their young audience
members might have to say in
the midst of a performance.
Though Dove admits “in
some ways [he] feels more
pressure on this project than
anything [he’s] done before,”
the director said he’s also excited by the prospect of directing something outside of
his typical repertoire.

“I started looking for menorahs that
I thought would be interesting and a
little different than what we had done
before,” Kessler said. “I sort of went
shopping. … I ended up with three
different menorahs that I thought we
could either shoot them individually,
or as pairs, one sort of in focus in the
front, one out of focus in the back, or
shoot all three together. … One of the
menorahs I saw was this hand-forged
menorah by the guy in Vermont, which
I thought was great. First of all, it ties
together the idea of American craft, as
well as the menorah being black and
forged. You always have to think about
stamp size — what’s this going to look
like stamp size? Here’s a case where the
cropping of the black menorah kind of

“Directors are always
talking about how we get a
little stuck sometimes. We
get pigeonholed and people
think we can only do one
thing,” Dove said. “And since
most of the work I’ve done in
the area has been for Forum
Theatre, I think people only
think of me as a pretty serious, drama, political theatertype director. But when I was
an actor, by far the place I was
most comfortable was comedy. It’s always fun to try and
get back to that as a director
because it’s a place I’m very
comfortable in but don’t get
to work in.”
chedgepeth@gazette.net

creates a great holder, if you will, for the
lit candles.”
According to Brown, the process
is a collaborative one. He and Kessler
worked hand-in-hand on the overall design of the stamp. When it came
down to the right menorah, Brown really liked the wrought-iron look.
“Because it was forged, you had all
the markings and stuff, the tool-work
that was on it,” Brown said. “So, photographically it was much more interesting to light that one and bring out some
of the textures of the forged markings.
It was nice and simple, straightforward
with a bold design. That was the one everyone sort of liked.”
wfranklin@gazette.net

T H E G AZ ET T E

Page A-16

Wednesday, November 27, 2013 b

AT THE MOVIES

Director gives ‘Hunger Games’ franchise and heroine a solid score
BY

MICHAEL PHILLIPS
CHICAGO TRIBUNE

“The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” is a lot like its own
celebrity heroine, Katniss Everdeen, who begins this second
“Hunger Games” movie fulﬁlling a public relations tour as
penance for her killer — literally, killer — popularity. She is
adored by millions; the books
are too. The three Suzanne Collins novels, to be spread across
four films, are being adapted
with both eyes on ﬁdelity to the
source material. All “Catching
Fire” had to do was to show up,
look good and not screw up to
succeed.
Consider “Catching Fire” an
example of successful franchise
installment delivery, on time
and in sturdy condition.
Some interesting shifts in
tone and texture this time out.
The ﬁlm looks nothing like the
ﬁrst, Gary Ross-directed “Hunger Games,” which I slightly
prefer to the solid, well-paced
No. 2. “Catching Fire” features
director Francis Lawrence behind the camera, and already
he has signed for the next two.
Ross favored hand-held shakycam stylistics in his depiction of
futuristic totalitarian America,

Liam Hemsworth stars as Gale Hawthorne in “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.”
a police-state mess known as
Panem. Lawrence, by contrast,
shoots “Catching Fire” with
a steadier gaze and a sleeker
touch, offering a little bit of everything and not too much of
any one thing.
For newbies: The games of
the title are battles to the death
between cunning, resourcefully murderous representatives of Panem’s beaten-down
districts. Through her wiles, her
bow-and-arrow skills and her
bangin’ fashion sense Katniss
triumphed, mournfully, in the

ﬁrst movie, surviving to the end
and cleverly engineering a lifesaving maneuver for her friend
and fellow district competitor,
the baker’s son, Peeta.
“Catching Fire” opens in
the script by Simon Beaufoy
and Michael deBruyn with
Katniss and Peeta, pretending
to be sweethearts for a rabid TV
audience, embarking on their
12-day victory tour, culminating in a big show at the Capitol. President Snow connives
to crush this fearsomely famous woman, whose ability to

PHOTO MURRAY CLOSE

foment revolution among the
oppressed masses is nothing
to dismiss. The movie is part
treatise on the hardships of unwanted notoriety, part blood
sport revisited, the games this
time played by an all-star cadre
of past winners.
Ways to die? Oh so many.
This time there’s creeping,
human-made poisonous fog,
which gives its victims a miserable case of acne, as if there
weren’t already enough points
of identiﬁcation for teens. There
are electrocutions, stabbings

and other classics. Shooting in
Hawaii, which gives this sequel
a distinct “Lost” look, director Lawrence traffic-manages
with considerable effectiveness.
The simian attack, for example,
which is plenty scary, recalls
Lawrence’s work with the computer-generated beasties in his
remake of “I Am Legend,” the
one starring Will Smith.
Like that picture, “Catching
Fire” has the bonus of a genuinely
charismatic performer at its center. Jennifer Lawrence, now an
Oscar winner thanks to “Silver
Linings Playbook,” emotes like
crazy throughout “Catching Fire,”
but you never catch her acting. It
feels real, and Lawrence sees to it
that we rarely experience the dramatic set-ups in terms of cheap
revenge or conventional movie
blood lust.
Josh Hutcherson returns
as Peeta; his romantic rival for
Katniss’ preoccupied affections
(she’s got a lot going on, after
all) is once again played by Liam
Hemsworth. Woody Harrelson,
Elizabeth Banks and Lenny
Kravitz buzz around engagingly
as Katniss’ entourage. You keep
waiting for better zingers, which
never arrive, but “The Hunger Games” isn’t about wit; it’s
about blunt lessons in hypocrisy

and class warfare, about to be
waged but good.
Newcomers to the franchise,
all welcome, include Philip Seymour Hoffman, as the game
designer with the ambiguous
motives, and Jeffrey Wright and
Amanda Plummer as a Muttand-Jeff pair of unlikely competitors, more about brains than
brawn. The violence in “Catching Fire” can get pretty rough,
but the reason these ﬁrst two
movies work relates to our ability to take the carnage seriously.
Lawrence’s Katniss doesn’t
Bruce-Willis her way through
the events of the rather thinly
spread story. Each time she witnesses a killing, state-sanctioned
or otherwise, it hurts. It means
something. We’re not talking
about highly dimensional or
evocative mythmaking here; the
ﬁlms are more about hitting the
marks and setting up the next
part. But they work.
Postscript A: I ﬁnd the rampant fashion merchandising
tie-ins with “Catching Fire”
pretty strange, given the outre,
drag-queeny excess of costume
designer Trish Summerville’s
clothes. At times the results
verge on “Priscilla: Queen of the
Hunger Games.” But for many
the costumes are part of the dystopian, blood-stained fun.
Postscript B: Stanley Tucci
reprises, drolly, his role of the
oily reality-TV host from the
ﬁrst picture. If his teeth get any
whiter we’re going to need special glasses to watch the third
one.

Damascus High School, which is expected to be a state wrestling title
favorite, is led by Mikey Macklin (top), one of the top returning wrestlers in the state this winter.

Back to the top:
Damascus wrestling looks
unbeatable, again
Swarmin’ Hornets’ top core of juniors
has team poised for high expectations

n

BY

NICK CAMMAROTA
STAFF WRITER

Damascus High School’s wrestling program had one of
the more successful seasons in its proud history last year. The
Swarmin’ Hornets won a Montgomery County title, a 4A/3A
West Region title and also captured regional and state dual meet
championships. The only trophy they didn’t take home was at
the Maryland state tournament at Cole Field House.
So what’s the ﬁrst thing coach John Furgeson did at his
team’s opening practice of the 2013-14 campaign?
He ripped all those records off the wall and threw them in
the trash.
“This is a whole new year and we told them you’ve got to go
out and get it,” Furgeson said. “The kids are in a good state of
mind right now and they’re letting things go, letting the chips
fall where they may. But it’s obviously a goal of ours to get the
ﬁve championships that we’re after.”
Such has become the norm at Damascus, which speaks remarkable volumes to how Furgeson has continued the legacy
left by former coach Dave Hopkins. From the youth program
all the way through to the varsity team’s top competitors, wres

See WRESTLING, Page B-2

Paint Branch, Northwest
meet again in football
Jaguars won ﬁrst game
in OT; this time it’s for
berth in state title game

n

BY

ERIC GOLDWEIN
STAFF WRITER

In October, a talented
Northwest High School football
team marched into Burtonsville
on a rainy Friday evening and
spoiled Paint Branch’s undefeated season with a 31-28 overtime victory.
If the Panthers (11-1) play
like that again — committing
turnovers and missing assignments — when they host the
much-improved Jaguars (10-2) 7
p.m. Friday in the Class 4A state
semiﬁnals, they’ll be in for trouble, Paint Branch coach Michael
Nesmith said.
“They were too good at that
time and they’re even better
now,” Nesmith said. “... If you
make the mistakes that we made
that game, it’ll cost you.”
While both teams come into
the state semiﬁnals riding hot

1858030

Col. Zadok Magruder High School graduate Alex Lee is playing professional soccer after recovering from getting hit by a car.

OVERCOMING
ROADBLOCKS

Magruder graduate’s path
to professional soccer has
included many detours

n

BY

TRAVIS MEWHIRTER

H

STAFF WRITER

eaders had never really been a cause of
concern for Alex Lee.
He had played soccer forever; they were
a common, everyday
part of the game. Yet
20 minutes into a 2010
spring game against Akron his sophomore
year, the University of Maryland, College

Park right back couldn’t help but feel a
twinge of anxiety.
This would be the ﬁrst time Lee headed
a ball after surgeons opened up his skull
and drained a potentially life-threatening,
10-centimeter blood clot in his brain.
Roughly six months earlier, on Oct.
10, 2009, he had been out in Washington, D.C. with some of his old teammates who were playing with the D.C.
United at the time. He said his memory
checks out around 9:28 p.m., but he was
told that, around 9:30, he mindlessly
crossed the street directly in front of a
car, which hit him head on.
Just a few blocks from George Washington University hospital, it took just 11
minutes for Lee to be carted through its

n Tickets: $5
n Stakes: The winner advances to
the Class 4A state championship
game to meet the winner of
Saturday’s Meade (10-2) at
Suitland (12-0) game.

See FOOTBALL, Page B-2

doors.
When he awoke in the hospital bed,
his thoughts went to soccer, ﬁrst wondering how his coach at Maryland, Sasho
Cirovski, would react, and then to his legs.
“I kept feeling my legs,” he said. They
weren’t paralyzed or, somewhat miraculously, even damaged much at all.
A little more than two years after the
accident, those legs got him drafted in
the ﬁrst round of the supplemental Major League Soccer draft by FC Dallas. He
lasted just a year with Dallas after a hernia sidelined him, but he has since signed
a two-year contract with the Richmond
Kickers.

See SOCCER, Page B-2

County girls’ soccer
players picked for
All-American game

IF YOU GO

streaks, it’s the Jaguars (10-2)
that are the talk of Montgomery
County football. Led by sophomore quarterback Mark Pierce,
Northwest has won four straight
games against high-quality op

PHOTO FROM ALEX LEE

B-CC, Good Counsel stars
among 44 named to an
event in North Carolina
BY JENNIFER BEEKMAN
STAFF WRITER

GREG DOHLER/THE GAZETTE

Eliza Doll (left) of Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School looks to shoot
the ball near the goal against Walt Whitman.

The 2013 high school girls’
soccer season has come to a
close, but four-year starting
Bethesda-Chevy Chase High
School midﬁelder/forward Eliza
Doll and four-year Our Lady of
Good Counsel goalkeeper Me-

gan “Stu” Hinz will get one more
chance to represent their respective programs on the pitch, and
on a national level.
Colgate University recruit
Doll and Hinz, a University of
Michigan recruit, were among
the top 44 players throughout
the nation selected to compete
in the First High School AllAmerican game scheduled for
Dec. 7 in Cary, N.C. Good Counsel leading scorer, Imani Dorsey,
who is committed to play soccer

See GIRLS, Page B-2

THE GAZETTE

Page B-2

FOOTBALL

Continued from Page B-1

BRIAN LEWIS/FOR THE GAZETTE

Northwest High School quarterback Mark Pierce drops back to pass against
Quince Orchard on Friday.

GIRLS

Continued from Page B-1
on scholarship at Duke University in
2014-15, was also selected — Falcons
coach Jim Bruno said she is the thirdranked high school player in the country — but is unable to attend.
“It means a lot [to be selected],”
Hinz said. “When I heard about it I was
really happy, I put a lot of work in this
year. To be recognized like this and partake in something like this means a lot.
I’m really excited, this is deﬁnitely an experience I will be able to draw back on.”
The All-American game coincides
with the biggest weekend in NCAA
women’s soccer as the College Cup is

SOCCER

Continued from Page B-1
Though they may not be
MLS, Lee, a 2008 graduate from
Col. Zadok Magruder High
School, is still “living a dream.”

Championship pedigree
As a senior at Magruder, Lee
led the Colonels to a 19-0 record
and a 4A state championship.
He set the school record for
goals in a season (21, in just 16
games), which subsequently resulted in his becoming the Colonels’ all-time leading scorer (52
goals) and an All-America nod.
In less than a year, as a Terp,

WRESTLING

Continued from Page B-1
tling is a passion at Damascus
that’s seemingly unmatched
anywhere else in the county,
possibly the state.
“This is what you hope you
would build up,” Furgeson said.
“The feeder program keeps
bringing in kids who are willing and able to put forth effort
and put a great team together.
They’ve been together for so
many years, so they all know
each other and like each other.”

1906003

ponents, including two victories
over Quince Orchard (10-2). The
Jaguars defeated the Cougars 2820 in the Class 4A West Region
championship game on Friday to
advance.
“Our kids realize that Northwest is a much improved team,”
Nesmith said.
Pierce threw two touchdowns
and two interceptions in the region ﬁnal, completing 13-of-23
passes for 133 yards. He is averaging three touchdown passes
during Northwest’s four-game
winning streak.
Northwest senior Joshua Gills
and Pierce shared quarterbacking
responsibilities when it played
Paint Branch in the regular season, with Gills taking most of the
snaps under center.
“[Pierce’s] conﬁdence seems
to have gone up several notches,”
Nesmith said. “He no longer looks
like a sophomore quarterback
when he’s back there.”
Northwest receiver Matt Watson has developed into Pierce’s
top target in the playoffs. The senior has ﬁve touchdowns in the
postseason.
“He came out of nowhere.

also being played Dec. 6 and 8 in Cary.
The participants will attend the semiﬁnal games on Dec. 6, an opportunity
both Doll and Hinz said they are looking forward to as well. Hinz might get
the chance to watch her future teammates, Michigan played its secondround game on Friday but the game
ended too late to be included in this
edition of The Gazette.
Doll and Hinz agreed playing
against the nation’s top high school
soccer players in an all-star format is
sure to provide a high level of competition. Both have attended NCAA tournament games in the past, they said, but
not in the past couple of years as they
close in on their own freshman seasons
of college ball, something that has only

Nobody knew who he was,”
Pierce said. “Everybody’s asking
me, ‘Who’s Matt Watson, who’s
Matt Watson?’ Just get the ball in
his hands and he’ll make a play.”
Paint Branch has won six
straight games, most recently a
51-48 victory over Perry Hall (102) in the Class 4A North Region
ﬁnals. The Panthers fell behind
26-6 before putting up 31 secondhalf points to escape with the win.
Senior quarterback Gaston
Cooper threw for more than 300
yards and scored four touchdowns to lead Paint Branch’s
comeback.
Nesmith said his team cannot
afford another slow start against

recently become so tangible, Hinz said.
Someday, both said they hope to play in
the College Cup.
“[A few years ago] I went to a Final Four game,” Doll said. “I still look
at those girls and think, ‘Wow, they’re
incredible.’ But I remember a few years
ago I was like, ‘This is a dream.’ I was so
excited that one day I would be playing
college soccer and it’s crazy it’ll be next
year.”
The All-American participants were
chosen by a selection committee that
included high school coaches and National Soccer Coaches’ Association of
America members and were selected
based on high school achievements
only, according to a news release. The
players were divided into East and West

Northwest.
“We have to play a great game
in order to beat these guys,” Nesmith said.
The Panthers are coming off
a 3-7 season, one which Nesmith
called an “aberration.”
“We had a talented team last
year a team that we felt could
have been a playoff team had it
not been for a lack of chemistry,”
Nesmith said.
This season there is more of a
team effort, Cooper said.
“We’re bonded together.
Last year we didn’t really have
too much of a team bond, but
this year we’re even more close,”
Cooper said.

coast teams. Hinz and Doll, who have
known each other for years through
club soccer and the Olympic Development Program, agreed the opportunity
to represent the East Coast and Washington Metropolitan area in particular
is an additional honor and adds fun
twist on the all-star game.
“I think [the All-American game] is
a cool idea and I like the idea of playing against the West team because it’s
totally different competition,” Doll said.
“I’m excited, I think it’s going to be really competitive. You always hear about
California girls being such incredible
soccer players, I’m excited to represent
the East Coast.”
Players are scheduled to arrive
Thursday and should have no more than

Lee played 13 games at forward
in what eventually resulted in a
national championship. NCAA
title in hand, the entire back line
turned pro, three going to the
MLS, one to the United Soccer
Leagues, and Cirovski needed
some new defenders.
“At our level, you have to
have players in the back who
have an understanding of a forward’s mentality,” he said.
To his chagrin at the time,
Lee was that archetypal, offensive-minded defender whom
Cirovski sought.
“At ﬁrst I was pretty disappointed,” he said. “But eventually, when I was playing back
line, I was loving it.”
In time, Lee established

himself as a starter. But then
came the car accident just 11
games into his sophomore season, and so began the long road
of recovery.
“He was always a great
healer with muscle injuries,”
Cirovski said. “But you never
know with the head. We all
thought his career was over.”
Lee was back to school in
less than a month, jogging in
two months, and running full
speed in four. That fall he returned as Cirovski’s full-time
starter at center back and led
the Terps to a school-record 15
shutouts in his junior season.
But at the end of his collegiate
career it was back to rehab after
a pulled quadriceps sidelined

him for the ﬁnal eight games of
his senior season as well as any
professional combines he had a
chance to participate.
Despite the missed time,
Dallas drafted him with the 11th
overall pick in the 2012 supplemental draft. Lee was going pro.

As crazy as it might sound,
this year’s team could potentially
be better than the group that won
four out of ﬁve possible titles last
season. And that’s a scary proposition for local coaches.
“Damascus is clearly the
cream of the crop,” said BethesdaChevy Chase coach Nick Arnone.
“I’d be shocked if they don’t win
the state title for the next few
years. Just seeing the team that
they have coming back and the
youth they have coming in, it’s going to be tough for any team in the
state to compete with them.”
The Swarmin’ Hornets are

led by a juniors in Owen Brooks,
Ari Capacardo, Johnny Fischer,
Mikey Macklin, Cory Obendorfer
and Michael Wilkerson. Macklin won a 4A/3A state title at 106
pounds last season, while Wilkerson took home a region title and
Brooks lost in the region ﬁnal.
They’ll also likely be able to absorb the blow of losing four key
seniors from last year’s team (Caleb Baisden, Andrew Nickell, Michael Scafate and George Vinson)
with relative ease, which says
something about the talented
underclassmen stepping in.
“Those guys are setting the

The Northwest-Paint Branch
winner will face either Suitland
(12-0) or Meade (10-2) in the state
championship game scheduled
for Dec. 6 at M&T Bank Stadium
in Baltimore.
Paint Branch has not won a
state championship since 1975.
Northwest, established in
1998, won its ﬁrst and only state
title (3A) in 2004 when it defeated
Lackey 14-9.
“If we beat QO we can beat
anybody,” Pierce said. “We’re hot
right now. We need to keep going,
we need to keep going.”
Travis Mewhirter contributed. egoldwein@gazette.net

two days to practice with their teams, but
Doll and Hinz agreed the magnitude of
the event will still bring out the best in
these highly competitive athletes. Doll
also said she is familiar with many of
the girls on the East team through club
soccer. One of them, Carissima Cutrona
(Williamsville, N.Y.), will be her teammate next year at Colgate.
There are only so many ways high
school girls’ soccer players can be recognized, Bruno said, and being one
of 44 players selected from the entire
country to play in an All-American
game is quite remarkable.
“It’s really a prestigious honor,”
Bruno said. “It’s a great thing for them.”
jbeekman@gazette.net

His quad recovered, Lee
was back into what he says was
close to the best shape of his life.
Then, with the Dallas coaches
telling him he was scheduled to
make his ﬁrst start, Lee began to
feel pain. In October, after two
to three months of rehabbing
the enigmatic injury, a doctor
concluded Lee had a hernia. He

would need season-ending surgery.
As Lee went through yet
another rehab, management
changed hands in Dallas, and
his option wasn’t picked up.
“I knew it was coming,” Lee
said. “He hadn’t seen me play.
He didn’t know anything about
me.”
But he was sure other pro
clubs would come calling.
Only one, Tampa, did, but
the tryout was fruitless.
“I was real close to retiring,”
he said.
His agent informed him
of a last-ditch tryout for a USL
club, the Richmond Kickers. It
took just one weekend for coach
Leigh Cowlishaw to extend Lee a

contract.
“To be honest, right away
we knew he was going to be the
right ﬁt for us,” he said. “The
boy has an engine, always wanting to join the attack, which was
exactly what we wanted.”
Lee appeared in 20 games,
was ﬁfth on the team in minutes
(1,664), and stood out enough
that its big brother afﬁliate, the
D.C. United, invited him and
two others on a trip to Indonesia
next week.
“I think he has all the attributes to play in the MLS,”
Cowlishaw said. “I think it’s just
if someone is willing to take a
chance on him.”

tone already in the room,” he
said of his juniors. “No nonsense, no complaining. For the
most part, these guys wrestle
year round and are doing everything they can to be successful.
With that in mind, they’re just
kids and they just want to have
fun. It’s really special and cool to
see them do that.”
Of course, perspectives can
vary when it comes to the county’s opponents sizing up the
Hornets. Everything from great
respect to a deep desire to beat
them. But Northwest coach Joe
Vukovich, whose teams are tra-

ditionally very strong, said it’s
important to have a squad like
Damascus set the standard for
excellence in the area.
“We can really benefit by
having a state championshipcaliber team like them in our region because everyone’s got to
rise to that level,” he said. “It’s all
about who’s going to step up to
their level and challenge them.”
Whether any team will be
able to do so remains to be
seen, but Furgeson did his grapplers no favors by setting an extremely difﬁcult schedule that
includes a trip to Glenelg, a visit

from DeMatha Catholic and a
tournaments that feature Oakdale and River Hill. He wants to
make sure no venue, including
the eight mats and bright lights
of the state tournament, is too
big for his group.
“We’re not going to creep
up on anybody,” Furgeson said.
“We’re not one of the younger
teams anymore. There’s pretty
much a bull’s-eye on our chest.
But the kids are going about it
with a great energy and they’re
having fun too.”

Another chance

tmewhirter@gazette.net

ncammarota@gazette.net

THE GAZETTE

Wednesday, November 27, 2013 b

Page B-3

GIRLS’ VOLLEYBALL

Player of the Year

Rhamat
Alhassan
Senior
Holy Cross
Middle

BILL RYAN/THE GAZETTE

Winston Churchill High School’s Hunter Sutton (right) is one of the top returning wrestlers in the state.

Bound for Florida next year,
the Player of the
Year hit for 296
kills in leading
the Tartans to a
WCAC title

Wrestling preview: Should
be a competitive season

BRIAN LEWIS/THE GAZETTE

Academy of the Holy Cross senior Rhamat Alhassan is The Gazette’s Player of the Year in
girls’ volleyball for 2013 after leading the Tartans to their conference championship.

Good Counsel, Churchill,
Sherwood should lead a
wide-open ﬁeld in race for
second place

n

BY

First Team

NICK CAMMAROTA
STAFF WRITER

Heading into Montgomery County’s 2013-14 wrestling
season, there’s Damascus High
School and then there’s everybody else.
That’s becoming as much
a fact of life as it is a testament
to the program that Swarmin’
Hornets coach John Furgeson,
entering his sixth season, and
his staff have built.
But, as always, anything
can happen in a county where
so many teams feature strong
wrestling talent and — particularly in the race to see who might
be able to top might Damascus — it’s anyone’s guess as to
which squads will stand out by
year’s end.
“We’re looking forward to
the challenges,” said Furgeson,
who returns a crop of six talented juniors to a team that won
four of ﬁve possible trophies last
postseason. “The guys are working hard, having fun and trying
to get back to where we ended
last year.”
A number of teams could
have a shot at knocking off the
Swarmin’ Hornets, with Winston Churchill, Sherwood and
Walt Whitman near the top of
that list.
For the Bulldogs, the season
is loaded with promise provided
their wrestlers can stay healthy.
Tim Lowe’s team is expected to
return one of the better wrestlers in the state, let alone the
county, in Hunter Sutton. Had
Sutton not gotten hurt midway
through last season, he might be
in position to win a fourth state
championship this year. As it is,
he’ll have a great shot at winning
three as he joins Adama Keita as
two premiere middleweight returners.
Sherwood also should be a
team to look out for. Coach Pete
Siarkas returns a senior-laden
squad that’s very balanced in the
lower and middle weights. Senior Chris Minor, who last year
earned his 100th victory, joins
Andrew Frumkin, Cal Wilson,
Matt Roberts and senior transfer
Robby Happy as the nucleus of a
very strong team.
“This is going to be one of

GEORGE P. SMITH/FOR THE GAZETTE

Sherwood High School’s Chris Minor (bottom) is one of the top returning
wrestlers in the state.
my better teams that I’ve had in
the last four years,” Siarkas said.
“I’m just anxious to get the season started and to see where we
are.”
For Whitman, the depth
stretches beyond returning
4A/3A West Region champions
in Mitch Fenton and Jack Calder.
While those two undoubtedly
are expected to turn in memorable campaigns, coach Derek
Manon has plenty to be excited
about.
At Northwest and BethesdaChevy Chase, both teams lost a
lot of talent to graduation but
are likely to reload quickly. Nick
Davis is the Jaguars’ only returning state tournament qualiﬁer while state champion Luis
Beteta’s younger brother Mauro
Beteta and Dell Ngonga are also
expected to be leaders.
“This year’s going to be interesting,” Northwest coach Joe
Vukovich said. “In any given
year you have some teams that
surprise you, and some perennial powerhouses. This year,
you’ll have a big group of teams
that fall under Damascus and attempts to chase them.”
For the Barons, the graduation of state champion Charlie
Banaszak, as well as Sean Cohen
and Jesse McNeill, hurts but Jack
Banaszak, Brendan Cowie and
Justin Elwell return to lead last
year’s regional duals runner-up.
“I think this might be one of
the more athletic groups we’ve
ever had to start with,” said
B-CC coach Nick Arnone.
Thomas S. Wootton, Col.
Zadok Magruder, Paint Branch
and Walter Johnson all could

factor into the mix as well depending on how things play out.
Montgomery Blair (Steven
Banvard), Springbrook (Rob
Whittles) and Quince Orchard
(Rob Wolf) all have new coaches
this season but could still turn
in strong performances. Especially the Cougars, who are led
by Connor Tilton and Kyle Bollinger.
In the private school ranks,
even though the three-time AllGazette Player of the Year Kyle
Snyder is no longer wrestling in
the county, that doesn’t mean
Our Lady of Good Counsel won’t
be good again.
Snyder left Good Counsel
in the summer and moved to
Colorado to pursue his dream
of wrestling in the Olympics,
but coach Skylar Saar returns six
members of last year’s All-Gazette team to a group that won a
state title. Jemal Averette, Kevin
Budock, Paul Hutton, Matt
Kelly, Nick Miller and Adam
Whitesell all are back. Throw
Donovan McAfee and Kyle’s
younger brother, Kevin Snyder,
into the mix and it’s easy to see
why Saar is optimistic.
“It’s going to be interesting
to see how the kids respond [to
winning a state title],” Saar said.
“They’ve done great in practice
so far. No problems there as far
as their effort. But the schedule’s
going to be very tough.”
Meanwhile, Georgetown
Prep should again be strong as
the Hoyas return First-Team AllGazette wrestlers Colin Kowalski
and Michael Sprague.
ncammarota@gazette.net

Montgomery College reveals its Raptor
School hopes new
mascot will help promote
its teams
n

BY

KENT ZAKOUR
STAFF WRITER

Therewereneonpurplelights,
smoke and loud music. And on
Nov. 19, Montgomery College introduced its new mascot, the Raptor, in front of students, faculty,
staff and community members
inside the school’s main gymnasium in Rockville.
“This was a long time coming for two years,” College-wide
Director of Athletics Derek Carter
said. “Everybody’s known — the
teams were playing under the
name — we were changing to a

DAN GROSS/THE GAZETTE

Montgomery College’s new mascot,
the Raptor, was introduced Nov. 19.

Raptor, but the mascot was a mystery. It’s another chapter for us.”
The revealing was just part of
Montgomery College’s rebranding of its athletic department. In
the spring of 2012, the Division
III junior college combined all of
its sports — from the Rockville
(formally Knights), Germantown
(Gryphons) and Takoma Park

(Falcons)campuses—intoa“One
College, One Team” concept. This
was in part of a larger mission by
the college to become one institution rather than three distinct
campuses. Additionally, the NationalJuniorCollegeAthleticAssociation made a rule change stating
that a student-athlete attending a
multi-campus school could play
for another campus, with the condition that no other campuses had
the same sport.
A contest was held to determine the new colors (purple,
black, silver and white) and the
bird of prey mascot.
“Like they said, a raptor is an
aggressive thing and that’s what
you want your teams to represent,” sophomore student and
Gaithersburg resident Jeff Murray
said.

Sarah
Kenneweg

Carly
Marella

Lizzi
Walsh

Kaitlyn
Hillard

Annika
Schwartz

Megan
Conger

Senior
Poolesville
Libero

Senior
Damascus
Setter

Senior
Magruder
Outside Hitter

Senior
Churchill
Outside Hitter

Senior
Damascus
Outside Hitter

Sophomore
Good Counsel
Outside Hitter

The backbone
a Falcons team
that reached
the state title
game; ﬁnished
with 284 digs

Surrounded by
hitters, the versatile setter ﬁnished with 554
of the team’s
620 assists

One of the
most powerful
hitters, the Lafayette recruit
ﬁnished with
216 kills

The Bulldogs’
go-to hitter,
Hillard led
them to their
ﬁrst top playoff seed in 27
years

The top hitter on a team
full of them,
Schwartz led
Hornets to
their ﬁrst ever
state title

Established
herself as the
team’s best
hitter, averages
nearly 13 kills
per match

Coach of the Year
Becky
Ronquillo
Damascus
Swept La Plata to
win the 3A state
title, the ﬁrst in
Damascus’
history

Two swimmers tied Conger for
the most individual points scored at
last year’s Metros and both of them
are Prep juniors: Grant Goddard
and Carsten Vissering. Classmates
Brandon Goldstein and Adrian Lin
weren’t too far down the list. The
four knocked off Prep’s pool record
in the 400-yard freestyle, formerly
held by rival Loyola Blakeﬁeld, in the
Little Hoyas season opener to set the
tone for 2013. If four swimmers could
alone win championships, though,
Prep might never have fallen. It was
the Hoyas’s lack of depth that has
hurt it in recent years but that appears to be back, making this year’s
squad quite a formidable opponent.
“Last year we were close and we
didn’t lose any points and we gained
a few so we’ll see if that [makes the
difference],” Prep coach Matt Mon-

Georgetown Prep’s Carsten Vissering is one of the top returning swimmers in the entire state.
gelli said. “Last year I thought we’d
be close but yes, this was the year I
thought by the [Class of 2015’s] junior year we’d really be ready to take
on anybody.”
The Thomas S. Wootton girls
completed their ascent to the top
of area swimming last winter and
though the Patriots did lose some
scoring, they have plenty swimmers
to ﬁll in those holes. It’s hard to see
Wootton falling off the top so soon,
but if anyone is going to knock the
Patriots down, it will be rival Winston
Churchill. The Bulldogs didn’t lose
any scoring and boast the county’s
strongest diving contingent — those
points don’t count at the seasonending state championship, though.
Richard Montgomery’s boys
could surface as the best team out
of the public ranks this winter. The
Rockets and Montgomery Blair,
which ﬁnished second at last year’s
state championship but lost some
top scoring, should vie for the top
two spots.

Contenders
Poolesville’s boys won their second straight 3A/2A/1A state title last
winter and with the meet’s top two

Other teams to watch
Independent School League foes
Stone Ridge School of the Sacred
Heart and Holton-Arms likely don’t
have the numbers to truly compete
for a Metros title but that doesn’t
mean these two teams aren’t two of
the most exciting to watch or capable
of causing a stir at various championships.
Propelled by current junior

Caroline McTaggart, Holton won its
ﬁrst-ever Washington Metropolitan
Prep Schools Swimming and Diving Championship last winter. And
it’s pretty hard to forget the national
record-setting performances Stone
Ridge junior, 2012 Olympic gold
medalist and multiple world record
holder Katie Ledecky put forth in
leading the Gators to a fourth-place
ﬁnish at Metros, its best in recent history.
Sherwood’s girls’ lost some major scoring but sophomore Morgan
Hill will help the Warriors stay aﬂoat.
It’s been a while since Albert Einstein
drew much attention but the Titans
now boast several race contenders.
Good Counsel should not be discounted, but lost tremendous talent
on both sides and with new coaches
this winter, could be going through
a bit of a transitional period. Not
to take away from some returning
stars who will certainly shine on the
championship stage.
“I’m really interested to see how
it plays out in the county,” Walter
Johnson coach Jamie Grimes said.
“I think it’s going to be very interesting.”

scorers back — Xavier Laracuente
and Alex Lin — along with a slew of
other returning scorers, they are on
pace to go for a third.
Long overshadowed by the
boys’ side, Walter Johnson’s girls
are the strongest they’ve been in a
while. They might be just short of
Wootton and Churchill’s level but
might be able to push both. Richard
Montgomery’s girls are inching their
way back to the top and with a solid
group of younger swimmers, the
Rockets should push for top ﬁve at
Metros and perhaps higher at states.
Wootton’s boys lost a big-time
scorer with the graduation of breaststroker Austin Dickey but the Patriots should not be counted out, nor
should Churchill’s boys.

Girls

1864902

Favorites

Boys
n Bethesda-Chevy Chase: Jack Crow

BY JENNIFER BEEKMAN
STAFF WRITER

For the seven years during which
the Georgetown Prep swimming and
diving team reigned as Washington
Metropolitan Interscholastic Swimming and Diving champions from
2004-10, it was hard to imagine a
time when the Little Hoyas would
be vulnerable. But even the best programs are not immune to the cyclical
nature of high school sports, and in
2011, Washington Catholic Athletic
Conference power Gonzaga began
its three-year reign; Georgetown
Prep hit a low of fourth place.
This year, the Eagles will be feeling the brunt of harsh graduation
losses and Prep, which ﬁnished second by just 20.5 points a year ago,
has been gradually building itself
back up around a core of extremely
talented current juniors. With star
power and more depth this winter,
the Little Hoyas will look to regain
the coveted spot atop the Metros
rankings and for the ﬁrst time in several years, they have the means to be
the favorite.
That being said, the winter is
shaping up to be perhaps the most
unpredictable high school swim
season recently, especially among
Montgomery County Public Schools
programs. A lot of teams lost depth
from last year, and the graduation
of Our Lady of Good Counsel’s Jack
Conger, who seemed to break a record every time he entered the pool,
has opened a lot of doors.

SWIMMERS/DIVERS TO WATCH

Wednesday, November 27, 2013 b

THE GAZETTE

BUSINESS

State recognizes Kentlands for its
geothermal heating, cooling system
New unit is estimated to reduce
annual electric costs by 40 percent
n

BY JENN DAVIS
STAFF WRITER

The Kentlands Clubhouse in Gaithersburg received state recognition Thursday
for its newly installed geothermal heating
and cooling system.
Doug Hinrichs, a solar energy planner
at the Maryland Energy Administration,
visited the community center Thursday to
see the system and applaud the Kentlands
Citizens Assembly and two local companies that specialize in geothermal systems
on completion of the project.
Construction of the system, which began this past summer and ended in September, cost about $250,000. However, the
project won a $120,000 grant from the state
energy administration’s Game Changer
Program, which promotes innovative clean
energy projects.
A geothermal heat pump was put in,
using two standing column wells that were
drilled 900 feet into the ground, said Mike
Heavener, president of GeoSolar Energy.
Systems with standing column wells are
most commonly used in areas that have
near-surface bedrock, like the Kentlands.
With this setup, water is drawn from
the bottom of the deep rock well, passed
through a heat pump, and returned to the
top of the well. While the water is traveling
downward it exchanges heat with the surrounding bedrock.
“It’s the exact model system that we
want in Maryland,” Hinrichs said, referring to the “standing column wells” design,
which typically requires 30 percent less
drilling and therefore delivers a more efﬁcient heat transfer. “We want to replicate
the success of this project.”
The grant program requires energy
monitoring by the installing contractor
and a ﬁnal report after one year of system
operation.

Page B-5

TOM FEDOR/THE GAZETTE

Neil Harris (left), chairman of the Kentlands Citizens Assembly, talks Thursday with Michael Heavener, president of GeoSolar Energy in Gaithersburg, about the geothermal system used to heat and
cool the Kentlands Clubhouse. The pair are in a utility room on the lowest level where well water is
piped in and out.
In April, the Kentlands Citizen Assembly
Board of Trustees voted to replace the clubhouse’s conventional heating and cooling
system with a sustainable alternative after
one of the old system’s three units died.
“We wanted to take the lead on doing
this from a green point of view,” said Tim
Clarke, president of the Kentlands Citizen
Assembly. “It is energy efﬁcient, and it is a
more progressive way of doing this kind of
heating and air conditioning.”
Harvey W. Hottel, Inc., a Gaithersburgbased plumbing contractor, and GeoSolar
Energy submitted the grant application
and installed the new system. GeoSolar
Energy also is rooted in Gaithersburg and
is the distributor of Bosch, the equipment

used for the job.
“These jobs are fun,” said Richard Hottel, chief executive ofﬁcer of Harvey W.
Hottel, Inc. “It’s not something that some
engineer drew up and we just estimated
the cost and put it in. It’s something we’ve
created for this site.”
Clarke said it is estimated that the new
unit will give the clubhouse about a 40 percent electric utility reduction annually.
In the two months the system has been
running, the clubhouse already has seen
between a 20 and 25 percent decrease in
its yearly electric bill, according to Clarke.
“It’s already paying for itself,” he said.
jedavis@gazette.net

132637G

BizBriefs

Have a new business in Montgomery County?
Let us know about it at www.gazette.net/newbusinessform

Activity Rocket enters second stage of business
Bethesda’s Activity Rocket, an online search engine allowing
parents to ﬁnd classes, sports and other activities for their children
in a one-stop shopping approach, launched an upgraded platform
in October.
Its new website, designed by iStrategyLabs in Washington,
D.C., enables parents to complete one application for each child
and save it to use again.
Parents can also place their selections in a shopping cart and,
after making tentative selections, have Activity Rocket see if times
and dates work together. They can then lock in their selections and
pay for them, all at one place. Searches can be made by activity
type, price, location or day.
“For a parent of three children who all want to do different activities there is one registration form that lives on the website and
they can book all their classes,” Linda Friedlander said. Friedlander
and Ilene Miller started Activity Rocket in September 2011 with 80
Montgomery County businesses and about 300 parents, they said.
Since then they have expanded to other communities in the
D.C. region and now have almost 500 businesses listed on the site,
over 3,000 members and 7,000 monthly visits, Miller said.
The website is free for parents. Members pay the price of the
class as if registering directly with the business. Businesses, which
could list for no charge during the ﬁrst stage, are now asked to become subscribers with a number of information packages available.
Activity Rocket is offering $20 gift cards to parents who sign up
for activities for trying the new website and one-stop shopping cart.
The website is www.activityrocket.com.

Rockville chamber elects new leaders
The Rockville Chamber of Commerce recently elected ofﬁcers
and board members for 2013-14.
Larry Finkelberg of Amerihome Lending is chairman; John
Britton of the Close Up Foundation is vice chairman; Doug White
of Glass Jacobson is treasurer; Nancy Regelin of Shulman, Rogers,
Gandal, Pordy & Ecker is corporate secretary; and Michael Gottlieb
of the Gottlieb Law Firm is immediate past president.

Building a new bear
Build-A-Bear Workshop moved to a new location in Bethesda’s
Montgomery mall last month with ways to make stuffed animals
come alive.
The store’s technology provides a more interactive experience
for customers, according to a news release. Customers can personalize the bear-making process and have a different experience each
time they visit.
More information is at buildabear.com and a virtual tour of the
store is at http://bit.ly/QAoJqJ.

THE GAZETTE

Page B-6

Wednesday, November 27, 2013 b

SCHOOL LIFE
After-school nature clubs introduce students to science and play
Students learn
to ‘Unplug and Play’
n

BY

PEGGY MCEWAN
STAFF WRITER

They ran around like a pack of hyenas, trying to steal prey from a lion,
but their laughter gave them away every time.
Finally the lion suggested they take
a break and decide how to work together to fool him.
Students at Glen Haven Elementary
School in Silver Spring played Scavenger Scheme, Thursday, the last day of
a six-week after-school program to encourage students to connect with their
environment and learn to play together
outdoors instead of inside in front of a
computer screen.
The program, “Unplug and Play,”
funded by a grant from the Montgomery County Council, is for thirdthrough ﬁfth-grade students and run
by the Audubon Naturalist Society at

four Title I elementary schools: Glen
Haven in Silver Spring, Rolling Terrace in Takoma Park, Captain James
E. Daly in Germantown, and Gaithersburg. Each group has 15 to 20 students.
The goal of the program is to give
students a combination of science education and outdoor physical activity,
said Karen Vernon, director of youth
eduction for the society.
“We’re working to widen the community of people who treasure the
natural world, especially young people
who are our next generation of environmental stewards,” said James Robey,
the Audubon Society’s environmental
education program manager and the
lion in Scavenger Scheme. “The students are helping the environment by
learning about it and they are making
healthy lifestyle choices by being physically active.”
Students in the program meet for
one hour each week and start with a
healthy after-school snack provided by
Montgomery County Public Schools.

Robey said he starts each class with a
lesson about animals, trees, plants or
birds before taking the students outside for a game to reinforce what they
learned. Sometimes he brings in a live
guest, such as Boris the Tortoise, a Russian tortoise, or Eddy Spaghetti, a corn
snake. He puts out a display of animal
pelts and skulls for the children to examine.
“It’s nice for the kids to have this
hands-on experience,” said Jessica
Lynch, Glen Haven second-grade
teacher and program coordinator.
Fifth-grader Kimberly Garcia said
she expected to be bored by the program when it ﬁrst started.
“By the second [week] I knew I was
supposed to be here,” she said. “It’s
hard for me to choose what’s my favorite [part], I think it’s when we went
outside and started playing and meeting everyone.”
Each of the schools’ programs is
ﬁnishing the ﬁrst six-week session, but
will meet again for winter and spring
programs.

PEGGY MCEWAN/THE GAZETTE

Third-grader Ezekiel Ruiz (left) and ﬁfth-grader Christian Ferrell examine Boris the Tortoise
during the “Unplug and Play” program at Glen Haven Elementary School in Silver Spring.

EDUCATION NOTEBOOK
Students connect with
nature ‘Beyond the Walls’
It was like traveling over the
river and through the woods
as students from the Franklin
Schools in Rockville on Thursday hiked outside their fenced
play areas into the surrounding
community for a nature lesson,
dubbed “Beyond the Walls.”
The children, 3 to 5 years
old, each carried a small basket, following Amy Beam, the
Montessori school’s outdoor
education specialist, in search
of nature’s treasures.
“It’s like when you went
trick-or-treating for Halloween,” Beam told the students.
“If you ﬁnd something special,
put it in your basket and we
will bring everything back and
spread it on the picnic tables
for the birds and squirrels, the
daddy longlegs, any creature. It
will be for their Thanksgiving.”
Most of the students ﬁlled
their baskets with brown pine
needles at the ﬁrst stop on the
hourlong hike, which took them
down a hill near a storm pond,
along a woods path and into the
open space behind neighboring
townhouses.
Suddenly Beam and her
young followers stopped. Beam
listened and pointed into the
trees at a hawk, one the group
had heard earlier.
“Look at that,” she said. “It’s
as big as a chicken.”
The students go on these
explorations two or three times
a month, sometimes with
Beam, who works with all the
Franklin classes, and sometimes led by their classroom
teachers.
They knew, as they got to
the open space, where to stop
and wait. They also knew, on
the teacher’s signal, to run as
fast as they liked to the distant
tree line.
“Listen,” Beam said. “As
soon as they start running, they
start laughing.”
She was right: The runners
ran and laughed until they got

Kunkin, who was captain, Jake
Gearon, Michael Josell and Sam
Zabronsky; and sophomore Ravi
Serota.
They are coached by Eduardo Polon, a Spanish teacher

and global languages department head.
The team provides camaraderie while celebrating academic achievement, Polon said
in a statement.
“Best of all, it’s fun,” he
wrote.

Students from the Franklin Schools in Rockville play on a pine needle-strewn
hill during their nature walk Thursday. The Montessori school offers a
“Beyond the Walls” program to encourage outdoor play.
to their destination.
“They are very comfortable
in nature,” said Terri Shaffer,
the group’s teacher. “It helps
them concentrate and when
they come in they are much
more peaceful.”
Beam said she started the
program after growing alarmed
that more and more children
were not going outdoors. She
attended programs at both the
Vermont Wilderness School
and the Wilderness Awareness
School in Washington state.
“I was searching for a program I could adapt here,” she
said. “It’s about connecting
with nature and the community
and inside themselves.”

Gaithersburg High to host
ﬁnancial aid seminar
Gaithersburg High School

will present a seminar on college ﬁnancial aid at 7 p.m.
Tuesday in the school’s Performing Arts Center, 314 S.
Frederick Ave.
Guest speaker Chad
Spencer, associate dean of
admission and ﬁnancial aid
at Davidson College in North
Carolina, will discuss ﬁnancial

aid for students applying to colleges and vocational schools.
Topics will include the following: What is ﬁnancial aid?
What is ﬁnancial need and how
is it determined? What are the
categories, types and sources of
aid? How does the application
process work?
Spencer also will discuss
merit-based aid and loan options, and share tips for negotiating the process.
All students and parents are
welcome. For more information, contact Geri Sliffman at
301-284-4616 or Geri_L_Sliffman@mcpsmd.org.

Sandy Spring students
dip into Quiz Bowl
After two years of in-house
practice, the Sandy Spring
Friends School’s Quiz Bowl
Travel Team competed in a
championship tournament
Oct. 27 hosted by James Hubert
Blake High School in Silver
Spring, winning fourth place.
The competition included
48 teams from public and private high schools.
Team members included
senior Ben Yumkas; juniors Emil

Two teams from Montgomery Blair High School in Silver
Spring are among the 64 teams
in the Bickel & Brewer/New
York University International
Public Policy Forum.
The international debate
competition gives high school
students the opportunity to engage in written and oral debates
on public policy issues and
compete for a $10,000 grand
prize and trip to New York City
in April to participate in the
competition ﬁnals.
“All of the advancing
schools are worthy of special
recognition, because they have
distinguished themselves in one
of the most competitive debate
competitions in the world,”
William A. Brewer III, chairman
of the Bickel & Brewer Foundation and a founder of the NYU
forum, said in a news release.
“As the elimination rounds get
underway, these outstanding
students will have the opportunity to put their research, writing and advocacy skills to the
test against competitors around
the globe.”
This year, 266 teams, representing schools in 37 states
and 28 countries, submitted
qualifying round essays afﬁrming or negating the topic:
“Resolved: As a last resort, unilateral military force is justiﬁed
to minimize nuclear weapons
proliferation.”
The essays were reviewed

by a committee, which determined the round of 64 based on
the quality of each 2,800-word
essay. The top 64 teams represent schools from 26 states
and 14 countries. Advancing
teams participate in a singleelimination, written debate
tournament via email with
judges reviewing the essays in
the order they are presented
until eight schools remain.
The “Elite 8” will participate in a live debate during the
ﬁnals.
“Blair is only one of three
high schools in the world to
have two teams in the round of
64,” debate team coach Stefanie
Weldon wrote in an email to
The Gazette. “Blair A is a repeat
team that also made the round
of 64 last year.”
Members of the Montgomery Blair A team are Aanchal
Johri, Callie Deng and Alan

Du. Rishabh Mahajani, Kevin
Zhang and Agam Mittal make up

Montgomery Blair B team.

Mayorga Coffee
establishes scholarship
Martin Mayorga, an alumnus of Montgomery College and
co-founder of Mayorga Coffee
in Rockville, has established
the Mayorga Latino Leadership
Scholarship at Montgomery
College with a gift of $25,000
over ﬁve years to the Montgomery College Foundation.
The donation will support
need-based scholarships for Latino students who are business
majors at Montgomery College.
It will cover annual tuition for
one student per year for at least
ﬁve years. More than 3,400 Latino students attend Montgomery College.
“Martin Mayorga’s generosity to the Montgomery College
Foundation is inspiring,” college President DeRionne Pollard
said in a statement.
“I know ﬁrst-hand the
struggles associated with
struggling to pay for a quality
education,” Mayorga said in

the statement. “My wife and I
started this company 16 years
ago to support all members of
our supply chain, and our community is a critical member
of that supply chain. I’m very
proud to be able to be a part
of developing future business
leaders in our local community.”
Mayorga Coffee imports
and roasts coffee, and has with
retail locations at regional
airports, plus National Harbor
in Oxon Hill and the Westﬁeld
Wheaton mall.

Scholarships available
for study abroad
Sixty-ﬁve full scholarships
are available for U.S. students
to study abroad for the 2014-15
academic year with the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange
and Study Abroad program.
Sponsored by the State
Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the
program brings almost 900 high
school students from about 40
countries with signiﬁcant Muslim populations to the U.S. to
study each year.
As program scholars, U.S.
American high schoolers serve
as “youth ambassadors” in their
overseas host countries. Students live with host families and
study in countries that may include Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mali, Morocco,
Oman, South Africa, Thailand,
Tunisia and Turkey. The meritbased scholarship covers domestic and international travel;
tuition and related academic
preparation; accommodations
with a host family; educational
and cultural activities in the
host country; orientations; applicable visa fees; three basic
meals per day; and medical
coverage.
Eligibility criteria are detailed in the application available at www.yes-abroad.org.
The application deadline is
Jan. 9.

THE GAZETTE

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THE GAZETTE

Wednesday, November 27, 2013 b

Wednesday, November 27, 2013 b

Classifieds

Page B-9

Call 301-670-7100 or email class@gazette.net

SILVER SPRING

Randolph Village Senior Apartments
"Affordable Independent Living For Seniors 62+."
Income Restriction Applies

It’s BRAND NEW at
Amber Commons
7 McCausland Place, Gaithersburg, MD 20877
“If you are looking for the distinctive,
the uncommon, the out of the
ordinary then welcome home to
Amber Commons where we have the
perfect blend of tradition: brick,
mature landscaping, and gracious
space combined with the best of
brand new: GE clean steel appliances,
energy efficiency and more!”

The business of the meeting will include the election of three directors to the Board of Directors of the Association, and such other business as the Board or Members may ask to bring before the
membership of the Association.

At this continued meeting, the members present in person and by
proxy shall constitute a quorum. A majority of the members may
approve or authorize the above proposed actions at the meeting.
This notice satisfies the requirements of Section 5-206 of the Cor- CUT YOUR
porations and Associations Article of the Annotated Code of Mary- STUDENT LOAN
payments in HALF or
land with respect to notice of the reconvened meeting.
(11-27-13)

Candidate must have strong analytical
skills, be a dependable team player.
Must work well unsupervised, be
dependable and have excellent work
ethics. Will supervise 5 billers and will
report directly to the Practice
Administrator. Send resume and three
references to ada.biesma@gmail.com .
Must pass background check. For
details go to fairfaxtimes.com/careers

Maryland State Inspectors
$1,000.00 SIGN ON BONUS

A progressive family owned and operated, high volume, state-of-the-art
dealership is seeking Maryland State Inspectors. If you’re an experienced
technician and possess the desire to make a great atmosphere even better, you
could be the perfect fit.
Responsibilities:
• Routine inspections
• System diagnostics
• Full automotive troubleshooting and testing
• Building upon your knowledge of industry-standard tools and equipment
Requirements:
• Previous experience as an automotive technician (ASE certification preferred)
• Solid mechanical skills
• Excellent Customer service skills
• Valid driver’s license, clean driving record

For Bank equipment. Clean driving
record to drive large truck a must. DOT
physical and random drug testing - NO
DRUGS or heavy alcohol use.
Background check for clearance - NO
CRIMINAL RECORD or bankruptcy.
Reliable and honest, strong work ethic
and skilled construction exp. To apply
please go to www.gazette.net/careers

Provide non-medical care and companionship for
seniors in their homes. Personal care, light
housework, transportation, meal preparation.
Must be 21+. Must have car and one year
professional, volunteer, or personal experience
www.homeinsteads.com/197
Home Instead Senior Care
To us it’s personal 301/588-9023
Call between 10am-4pm Mon-Fri

Sidwell Friends, a coeducational Quaker
day school, seeks a Manager for its
Tenleytown campus coffee shop/retail
store. A complete commercial coffee
shop serving a variety of drinks and
fresh baked goods adjoins a retail store
offering clothing, school supplies and
snacks. For job details go to
www.gazette.net/careers. Apply at
HR@sidwell.edu

Sales - Outside

James A. Wheat and Sons has immediate
opportunities for Salesman/Estimator who is
extremely knowledgeable in the HVAC &
Plumbing industry. Commission, Bonus &
Allowances. Target areas are Montg Co. &
DC. Experience required. Resumes can be
sent to ddimonte@wheatandsons.com or call
301-670-1444

Advertising Sales
Representative

Comprint Military Publications publishes 9
newspapers each week and the only website
dedicated to the military in the DC region is
looking for energetic, organized, computer savvy
sales representative to sell advertising into military
newspapers and online. Job requires previous infield and telephone sales experience. Must be
customer service oriented and consultative seller.
Candidates must be able to create ads for
customers and work well under weekly deadlines
and pressures of meeting sales goals. Prefer
candidates with experience. Territory open in
Northern VA. Headquarters in Gaithersburg, MD.
If interested and qualified, please send
resume and cover letter with salary
requirements to jrives@gazette.net.
We offer a competitive compensation, commission
and incentives, comprehensive benefits package
including medical, dental, pension, 401(k) and
tuition reimbursement. EOE.
Skilled Trades

Equipment Operator I

Maryland Environmental Service is hiring an
Equipment Operator I for the Montgomery County
Material Recovery Facility located in Derwood.
Qualifications include a high school diploma or
GED, plus one year of experience operating
loaders and forklifts. MES offers excellent benefits
including health, dental, paid time off, 401(k), and
tuition reimbursement. Send applications Attn:
400692 to: MES, 259 Najoles Road,
Millersville, MD 21108, or email:
resumes@menv.com, or fax: 410-729-8235.

ACCOUNTANT
Rockville CPA firm seeks CPA with 8 years recent
public accounting exp to work part-time. E-mail
resume to monteloeb@mloebandassoc.com

Page B-12

THE GAZETTE

Wednesday, November 27, 2013 b

Wednesday, November 27, 2013 b

Automotive

Page B-13

Call 301-670-7100 or email class@gazette.net

OURISMAN VW
BLACK FRIDAY
Specials
Where you always get your way.

“Omelet King”
Will Be Serving Breakfast
Starting At 6AM

OPENING AT 6 AM FOR DOOR BUSTER SAVINGS
$6,000 SAVINGS ON SELECT CARS IN THE SHOWROOM

It Is Here! The Gazette’s New Auto Site At Gazette.Net/Autos
With 2 great ways to shop for your next car, you won’t believe how easy it is
to buy a car locally through The Gazette. Check the weekly newspaper for
unique specials from various dealers and then visit our new auto website
24/7 at Gazette.Net/Autos to search entire inventories of trusted local
dealers updated daily.
Dealers, for more information call 301-670-2548
or email us at sfrangione@gazette.net